Monasti'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