Table Of ContentMonasti'cl'sm and the Ants
Fra Filippo Lippi, St. Benedict orders St. Maurus to the Rescue of St. Placidus, de¬
tail. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress
Collection.
dXonasticism
and the
Timothy Gregory Verdon
Edited by
John Dally
with the assistance of
Foreword by John W. Cook
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1984
Copyright © 1984 by Syracuse University Press
Syracuse, New York 13210
All Rights Reserved
First Edition
This volume has been published with the generous assistance
of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Raskob Foundation
for Catholic Activities.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Monasticism and the arts.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Christianity and the arts—Addresses, essays,
lectures. 2. Monasticism and religious orders—Addresses,
essays, lectures. I. Verdon, Timothy Gregory.
II. Dally, John.
BR115.A8M66 1983 246 83-17897
ISBN 0-8156-2291-0
ISBN 0-8156-2292-9 (pbk.)
Manufactured in the United States of America
This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of two men who in life
never met:
Dom Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B.,
monk of St. Anselm’s Abbey,
Washington, D.C.,
and
Charles Seymour, Jr.,
teacher of art history,
Yale University
Foreword
his book is intended for students of the humanities, particularly
in the history of religion and the history of art. The essays
comprising it explore, from a variety of viewpoints, the relation¬
ship between organized religious life in Western civilization
and the art forms this has fostered. The book and the symposium from
which it grew reflect the intense interest felt today in all areas of humanistic
study in the role of religious belief in the evolution of culture.
A cross-disciplinary effort such as this is indebted to the insights of
those anthropologists, social scientists, and psychologists concerned with
the reintegration of aspects of our culture that have come to be ai tificiallv
separated from each other in specialized academic disciplines. One indica¬
tion of interest in this form of integration is the proliferation of humanities
programs at major universities in the United States in recent years. Another
is the publication of excellent studies in academic art history which focus on
context and meaning, such as Jerome Pollitt’s Art and Experience in Classi¬
cal Greece and Michael Baxendall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth
Century Italy. In the area of religious studies, increased concern for liturgi¬
cal scholarship has fostered keen interest in the arts, both at the level of
philosophical consideration of their symbolic function and aesthetic import
as well as in actual usage. Yale University’s program in religion and the arts
is one effort within an academic community to address these issues.
Thus when Timothy Verdon approached me in April 1979 to
suggest a collaboration between Yale and St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washington,
D.C., to mark the forthcoming fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the birth of
St. Benedict, I responded with enthusiasm. A collaboration between an
va
academic institution and a religious community offered the opportunity for
an open, critical, and creative exchange of ideas. Professor Verdon and I saw
the centenary of the father of Western monasticism as a chance to integrate
separated disciplines and to provide a forum for dialogue. It seemed to us
that we had a significant opportunity to initiate a series of studies concen¬
trated on the life and influence of St. Benedict and, on the occasion of his
sesquimillennium, to review in the broadest terms the place of religious
faith in the historical interpretation of culture and its artifacts. The larger
goal of the symposium and of this book, therefore, is to suggest a meth¬
odological framework that scholars in several humanistic fields may share.
Monasticism as a way of life and as an influence spanning nearly seven¬
teen centuries of Western history is able to provide a vehicle for this ambi¬
tious effort.
The year 1980 saw many celebrations of St. Benedict’s birth. There
were several specialized conferences for monks and students of monastic
history in the United States and in Europe. A new annotated translation of
the Rule of St. Benedict was prepared by a team of American Benedictine
monks and sisters. Special exhibitions included “The Benedictines in Bri¬
tain” at the British Museum, one at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and an
exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., entitled “Monas¬
tic Themes in Renaissance Art.” Of these events, the Yale-St. Anselm’s
symposium was perhaps the broadest in historical scope and in the range of
subject matter considered. This book, which includes thirteen of the thirty
papers given in the six days of the conference, illustrates the point. It
combines new scholarship with classic statements on the central themes
of our subject in such a way as to serve the purposes of specialists as well
as students.
The preparation of these papers for publication as a unified volume
has been coordinated by Timothy Verdon, with the assistance of the Rever¬
end John Dally, until 1982 my colleague in the Yale Divinity-School Religion
and Art Program. Professor Verdon wrote the introductory essay and the
short comments preceding each chapter, which provide rich insight into the
way the parts of the book relate to the whole. The taxing editorial work that
goes into a collection of essays by different authors was divided between
Verdon and Dally. As always in such an undertaking, however, two or three
people are not solely responsible for the final product, and it is a pleasant
duty for all of us who have played a part in preparing Monasticism and the
Arts to express gratitude to the institutions and individuals who made the
symposium and the book possible.
We are grateful to Abbot James Wiseman, O.S.B., and the monks of
St. Anselm’s Abbey, Washington, D.C., and to Dean Leander Keck and the
viii
students of the Yale Divinity School. Also at Yale we want to express gratitude
to Provost Georges May and to Susan Miles and Carol Plantinga in the
Religion and Arts Office. In Washington, D.C., thanks are due to Giles
Constable and the staff at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University’s Center for
Byzantine Studies, which sponsored one session of the conference, and at
the National Gallery of Art, to the Director, J. Carter Brown; to Douglas
Lewis, Curator of Sculpture; and to Frances Smyth and Margaret Bouten. At
the Catholic University of America, our thanks go to President Anthony
Pellegrino. Also in Washington, D.C., Mrs. Jouett Shouse and the Reverend
Michael Farina of the Paul VI Institute for the Arts deserve recognition.
The svmposium “Monasticism and the Arts” was made possible by
grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for
the Humanities. This book has been published with the assistance of grants
from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Raskob Foundation for
Catholic Activities. The editors wish to express special appreciation to Mary
Davis, who retired recently as Vice President of the Kress Foundation, for her
encouragement and support.
New Haven, Connecticut John W. Cook
Summer 1983 Director, Religion and Art Program
Yale Divinity School
ix
