G. K. Chesterton, a truly humble soul, enrapt in gratitude and wonder, was moved to contemplate the deepest meaning of gothic architecture. More than a century later, our own souls find themselves singing in harmony with Chesterton as they hear and contemplate the beauty of his voice, and the beauty of the song he is singing.

Reading Chesterton can change your life. Take, for instance, his essay “The Architect of Spears.” Ever since I first read it, as a young man (many moons ago!), I have not been able to see gothic architecture without seeing simultaneously an image of the Church Militant on the march.

Chesterton’s essay was inspired by an optical illusion he experienced while looking at Lincoln cathedral from a distance, seeing it over the roofs of furniture vans in the foreground which he had mistakenly thought were cottages:

All of a sudden the vans I’d mistaken for cottages began to move away to the left. In the start this gave to my eye and mind I really fancied that the Cathedral was moving towards the right. The two huge towers seemed to start striding across the plain like the two legs of some giant whose body was covered with the clouds.

This optical illusion opened Chesterton’s eyes, for the first time, to the true nature of the gothic, prompting his Muse to wax lyrical in one of the most beautiful paragraphs he ever wrote. Such is its breathtaking beauty and its powerful imagery that it demands quoting in extenso:

The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The might and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge feet of imperial elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into battle; the silence was deafening with all the mingled noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist crashed his wings of brass.

And so, through the providential provision of an optical illusion, Chesterton had been afforded a vision of what he called “the battle beauty of the Gothic.” Then, as the last of the furniture vans moved away, the visionary found himself grounded once again in ordinary time, bereft of the transport of delight that had dilated his soul  into the fullness of mystical reality. “I saw only a church tower in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.”

As I stated at the outset, the romance of Gothic architecture was brought to life for me when I first read this wonderful essay. Quite literally brought to life. In prose prophetic and profound, Chesterton had baptized my imagination with images of the great gothic cathedrals and churches of Christendom marching across Europe, spreading the Faith they symbolised. Never again could I look upon church architecture without this poignant imagery imposing itself. Every morning, walking to work, the spire of Norwich Cathedral moving behind the rooftops conjured images of the Church Militant on the march, the spire pointing heavenward a permanent reminder of the Church Triumphant.

Today, revisiting the essay, I am moved to contemplate why Chesterton should have been gifted with such a vision. Why should he have been moved to mystical transports of an almost ecstatic nature when others might have experienced the same optical illusion and have merely shrugged and moved on as thoughtlessly as the furniture vans themselves? Why should Chesterton have been so animated while more prosaic souls, failing to be animated by the illusion, were rendered inanimate? The answer is to be found in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.

According to Aquinas, the ability to perceive reality in its fullness is dependent upon the virtue of the beholder. A person whose soul is possessed with humility will be moved with a sense of gratitude in the presence of beauty, enabling him to open his eyes in wonder. It is only when eyes are wide open with wonder that the beholder is moved to contemplation, the mind’s eye seeing the grandeur of God’s presence in the thing beheld. Such contemplation leads to the experience of dilatatio, the opening of the mind into the full presence of the real in both its physical and metaphysical splendour. By contrast, a person whose soul lacks humility will not feel any gratitude for the things he sees, his eyes being blind to any sense of wonder. Such a soul cannot be moved to contemplation and cannot experience the soul’s dilation into the fullness of the real. This is why Jane Austen, that greatest of philosophers, is correct when she insists that pride is inseparable from prejudice. The proud only see what they want to see which means that they don’t see what’s really there.

G. K. Chesterton, a truly humble soul, enrapt in gratitude and wonder, was moved to contemplate the deepest meaning of gothic architecture, his soul’s dilation finding expression with unsurpassed eloquence in the pouring forth of such magnificent prose, if indeed such poetic musings can really be considered prose.

And this brings me to the final thought that struck me upon re-reading the essay. It dawned on me that there is a chasm of difference between disillusionment and disenchantment. As the last furniture van moved away, Chesterton was disillusioned. He no longer experienced the optical illusion that had animated his imagination. He was not, however, disenchanted. On the contrary, the enchantment continued so that he could recall and record the mystical nature of the experience. He was so enchanted, and his words sung forth so enchantingly, that his readers are placed under his spell. More than a century later, our own souls find themselves singing in harmony with Chesterton as they hear and contemplate the beauty of his voice, and the beauty of the song he is singing. Such enchantment sings of the Great Music of Creation and praises the Music’s Composer. It raises its voice to heaven, much as gothic architecture raises its voice to heaven, in-spired by the God to which it points.

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The featured image, uploaded by Chrysanthi Kostidi, is a photo of the high Gothic flying buttresses of Metz Cathedral. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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