Normas vigentes a ser canceladas

As the literature review has shown, the presence of contemporary art in specific German churches is approached either from a Catholic or a Protestant standpoint. One reason for that is an author’s adherence to one of these branches of Christianity. Another is the historically established difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards the visual arts, the look at which takes us back to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. The question of church art was among the central issues that radically divided the reformers and the Vatican. While the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, did not come to develop a consistent doctrine of images and their use in the church; his followers, in particular Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, instigated the process of iconoclasm that spread across Northern Europe and England.72 The motifs for that were manifold. First, iconoclasm was a response to the abuse of power by the Roman Catholic Church. Second, the reformers argued that adoration of images was nothing less than idolatry. Pictures were seen as dangerous because they could move worshippers’ emotions and thus divert their attention from the message of the gospel. Third, it was only the Bible that could lead to understanding of God, as neither Christ nor the Holy Father could be comprehended through physical sight. It was also the word of God that condemned the use of images in the Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”73 _{From its foundation, Protestantism privileged the ear}

over the eye and the mind over the senses. Therefore, the suspicion towards images,

72 _{For explanation of Luther’s indeterminacy about the visual arts, see Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual}

Culture, 51–7.

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accompanied by iconoclasm in act and writing, has been inherited and manifested by Protestants throughout the past five centuries. This does not mean that either the first nor subsequent generations of reformers entirely abandoned religious pictures. On the contrary, they found an excellent use for them in propagandistic and educational efforts. In particular, the reformers employed printed image in the pamphlets that they distributed in large editions.74 Of course, a small format of a black-and-white print could not be compared to lavish paintings and sculpture found at altars inside churches; hence, there was no risk of wrongly swaying the common believer. Nevertheless, there were cases of altarpieces created for the first Lutheran churches, with significant examples appearing in Wittenberg, Dessau, Weimar, and Schneeberg.75 The artist Lucas Cranach was befriended by Luther himself, so that the painter produced most famous portraits of the father of the Reformation. Both content and form of first Protestant altarpieces were very precise in their qualities. The content was limited to what was either once seen or could be seen at the present moment–histories and events that could teach about the Christian past and thus illustrate the word of God.76 The form was to be as naturalistic as possible lest the worshipper’s imagination is stirred or the feeling of wonder is provoked. Figures of the reformers could be added to compositions in order to emphasize the virtue of Protestantism, as in

Wittenberg Altarpiece: The Last Supper and Scenes from the Life of Martin Luther by Cranach

(1547).77 _{Furthermore, Luther’s German Bible, printed in 1534, contained numerous illustrations}

that were meant to reinforce the power of the written word and, according to Luther, “for the sake of remembrance and better understanding.”78 _{Another type of semi-religious painting}

accepted by the Protestants was portraiture. Representations of the reformers, spiritual leaders,

74 _{Margaret R. Miles, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Boston:} Beacon Press, 1985), 115.

75 _{Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture, 55.} 76 _{Ibid., 78.}

77 _{Ibid., 55–6.}

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and scholars became widespread in the Protestant regions from the sixteenth century on. Such portraits did not merely serve to commemorate significant men and women but, as William Dyrness points out, “ought to be seen then as actual images of God’s grace […and] as allegories of virtue”79 _{That is, the Protestants acknowledged that the spiritual could be captured in a}

picture; however in a specific type of picture executed in an obligatorily plain style. A human being, created by God in his own image was Calvin’s argument for seeing God’s splendor in one’s neighbour instead of in painting or sculpture.80 _{Dyrness emphasizes how such thinking}

resulted in the new importance of the world outside church walls for the Protestant believers. On this premise, in addition to portraiture we could proceed to witness the prevalence of landscape and genre scene paintings in the Protestant regions of Northern Europe and England. However, the development of Protestant art production is not the primary concern here. For our purposes, what we can take away from the brief history of the Protestant view on the visual arts is an understanding of a specific type of Christian culture, one that can be characterized as language- dominated and education-oriented. In Protestant worship services, these characteristics are manifested through the strong emphasis on the preaching of the word; in Protestant lifestyle–in the cultivation of intellect through the study of God’s word and the creation of God in the world around.

In the Catholic Church, the image has historically been an essential element of individual and communal faith and worship. The earliest sites of Christian worship prove that religious imagery played a central role in the believer’s communication with God. Despite early cautionary texts on the danger of being attached to an image and the Iconoclastic Controversy in the Byzantine

79 _{Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture, 306–7.} 80 _{Ibid., 76 and 84.}

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Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries, images were inseparable from Christian tradition throughout the Middle Ages. The reliance on visual objects in medieval worship was rooted in the thought of Augustine of Hippo, whose theological writings of the late fourth and early fifth centuries shaped the development of Western Christianity. According to Augustine, physical objects of this world ought to be seen as signs of the invisible reality, or the realm of the divine.81 By looking at an image, the believer could contemplate the eternal and experience the spiritual. The significance of vision in the Early Church was reinforced by the display of relics, in order to behold which Christians were willing to go on long pilgrimages; and later in the thirteenth century, when the host was raised in the celebration of the Eucharist so that each worshipper could participate in communion by the process of viewing the consecrated bread. Vision was indispensable for exercising devotion; congregations would kneel and bow in front of depictions of Christ, Mary, and the saints, kiss them, burn candles before them, deliver their prayers to them, and confess their sins in front of them. Street processions with statuettes or pictures of sacred figures were likewise common. In addition, depictions of biblical stories were meant to teach the illiterate who neither comprehended the priest’s citing of the Scripture in the Latin language nor were capable of reading on their own. Medieval churches were filled with visual stimuli, causing later generations to speak of “the great religious art of the Middle Ages.” Margaret Miles observes how shortly before the Reformation the liturgy was “a minimally verbal experience” and “the engagement of vision had never been stronger.”82 _{Even though such}

abundance of religious imagery was condemned by the reformers and contributed to the split of the Western Church, the Catholics did not relinquish their predilection for pictures. While Protestant iconoclasm propelled the Catholic counter-reformers to rethink their heavy reliance on

81 _{Ibid., 21.}

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images, in the long run the production of church art and architecture was only intensified. In one of its last sessions (1563), the Council of Trent proscribed some subjects as leading to dogmatic errors but, overall, confirmed the importance and value of church art: “... not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them [...] but because the honor which is showed in them is referred to their prototypes which they represent, so that by means of the images which we kiss [...] we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear.”83 _{In addition to the affirmation of}

the importance of the saints, martyrs, and Mary, the Council of Trent called for artists to create pictures that would move emotions and inspire devotion. The Roman Church explicitly censured iconoclastic activism of the reformers and advocated not only the legitimacy but also the great virtue of religious art. As a consequence, new churches were built and painted with images that would appeal to the believer’s senses. Founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1534, the Society of Jesus set its goals to promote the Catholic faith around the world. While the Jesuits employed effective preaching and religious instruction to convert people into Catholicism, they also strongly believed in the possibility of spiritual experience through physical sight. The importance of senses was outlined in St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, a treatise of Christian prayers and meditations based on the author’s personal spiritual experiences and contemplation.84 _{The Jesuits}

taught their members to concentrate all the senses in order to reach the state of meditation of God’s truth. By and large the Society’s mother church, Church of the Gesù in Rome, exemplified the post-Tridentine attitude towards decoration of Catholic churches: “Wherein is inserted all possible inventions, to catch men’s affections and to ravish their understanding: at first, the gloriousness of their Altars, infinite number of images, priestly ornaments, and the divers actions

83 _{Quoted in ibid., 119.}

84 _{Marcia B. Hall, and Tracey E. Cooper, eds., The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (New York:} Cambridge University Press, 2013), 10.

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they use in that service…”85 _{What the Jesuits, and Catholics on the whole, were after was a total}

visual environment, upon entering which believers would be immediately captivated and their bond to the Church and to God would be strengthened through emotion.86 The celebration of the Mass in a Catholic church was and arguably remains the exaltation of the senses and their superiority over reason. However, as a theologian John O’Malley points out, the decoration of post-Tridentine churches did not respond to one singular pattern but varied from pope to pope, bishop to bishop.87 That is, the choice of visual objects introduced in sacred spaces depended on idiosyncratic tastes of religious leaders. Therefore, O’Malley cautions us against speaking of a singular Catholic type of church arts. The certain takeaway here is that images in Catholic churches and precisely the process of viewing them are conducive to profound religious experiences. Moreover, all visual elements in a Catholic building matter and, combined, they produce a unique, purportedly spiritual, atmosphere.

Closer to our day, in the mid-twentieth century, one could still hear claims reminiscent of Calvin’s animosity against the visual arts in a church: in the words of a great theologian, Karl Barth, “Images and symbols have no place at all in a building designed for Protestant worship.”88 _{Around the same time, Paul Tillich pronounces the possibility of modern art to elicit}

religious experience and invites Protestants to see art as a source of the divine truth.89 _{What this}

85 _{Impression of an English visitor to the Church of the Gesù in 1620, quoted in Miles, Image as Insight, 109. There} were, nonetheless, exceptional Jesuit churches that in their appearance maintained the spirit of poverty and simplicity. See ibid., 110 and 182, n.61.

86 _{The subjects believed to evoke the most powerful emotions were scenes of heavenly bliss, ecstasy of the saints,} tortures of the martyrs, and the death of Christ. For the discussion of particular artworks, see essays in The Sensuous

in the Counter-Reformation Church.

87 _{John W. O’Malley, “Trent, Sacred Images, and Catholic’ Senses of the Sensuous,” in Hall and Cooper, The}

Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church, 28–48.

88 _{Karl Barth, “The Architectural Problem of Protestant Places of Worship,” in Andre Bieler, Architecture and}

Worship: The Christian Place of Worship, transl. by Donald and Odette Elliott (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,

1965). Emphasis in italics is by the author of this thesis. 89 _{Tillich, On Art and Architecture, 15–6, 100–1, 180.}

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shows is the lack of unanimity regarding the subject in Protestantism. Given its numerous ramifications, even the term “Protestantism” at times seems to be an inadequate generalization of many worldviews. As we will see later, the use of the visual arts in contemporary Protestant churches in Germany both reflect and contradict the principles of the sixteenth-century reformers. It is especially interesting to observe how a language-dominated form of Christianity is challenged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, i.e. at the moment when the quantity of images overwhelm people’s daily lives and the level of verbal literacy might seem to decline. On the other hand, one may claim that Catholicism is entitled to boast a united view on church arts via the voice of the Pope. It is true that the principles of the Roman Church, expressed in the statements of the Vatican Councils and the papal letters to the international Catholic community, are accepted as guidelines for Catholic churches all over the world. Nonetheless, there are no clear-cut instructions on what constitutes appropriate church art and, consequently, disagreements occur as individual priests make decisions based on their own tastes. The case studies discussed below exemplify such diversity of tastes but also disclose what remains constant in the relationship between the visual arts and contemporary German churches.

In the end, the generalization about either a Protestant or Catholic attitude towards the visual arts is neither possible nor desirable. There can be as many attitudes as there are pastors and priests in this country or elsewhere. In this case, how do we speak about contemporary art housed in churches that represent different denominations and, hence, different positions on the subject? The solution is twofold. First, the discussion must privilege the art object and its reception. While it is important to ask the church officials about their purposes for introducing new art in a sacred space, the answer should not predispose final effects of art in question. Second, when it is necessary to reflect on the religious ideas, those common to Catholicism and Protestantism, or to

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the most of their branches, should be selected. While a theologian may disapprove of such procedure, it is important to note that a secular public notion, and often a believer’s notion, of some of the Christian tenets does not always distinguish between them as originally Protestant or Catholic, not to speak of particular beliefs of Calvinists, Methodists, Jesuits, etc.. The combination of these two methods promises to solve the problem of addressing diverse stances and policies taken by German churches in the same context.