Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies – medium Mr. A. Didier
The Spirit of Guttenberg defined very poetically the positive effects and so much universally progressive of the printing press and the future of electricity. Nonetheless I allow myself, as a former builder of castles, towers, terraces and cathedrals, to expose certain theories about the character and objective of the architecture in the middle ages.
Everyone knows and in our days illustrious archeologists taught that religion, the naïve faith, erected with human ingenuity those superb gothic monuments spread all over Europe, and here the idea expressed by Guttenberg is highly appreciated. It is our duty, however, to expose our opinion not against but in favor of his own.
The idea, that light of the soul, a real spark that excites human will and movement, manifests itself in several ways through arts, philosophy, etc. Architecture, the elevated art that perhaps better expresses the nature and genius of a people, was consecrated to worship God and religious ceremonies in religious nations. The middle ages, groundwork of feudalism and belief, had the glory of founding two essentially different arts in their objective and dedication but that perfectly express the status of their civilization: the fortress castle, inhabited by the feudal master or by the king; the abbey, the monastery and the church; in a word the military and religious architectures.
The Romans, essentially administrators, warriors, universal conquerors and colonizers, forced by the extension of their domains, never had an architecture inspired by religious faith. It was only greed, profit and the executive power that made them build those formidable mountains of stones, symbol of their audacity and intellectual capability. Gothic art, at the beginning austere and discretely flowery, was created by the poetry of the north, contemplative, fuzzy and united to the pageantry of the orient. In fact we see in the architecture the realization of religious tendencies and feudal despotism.
Those famous ruins of so many human revolutions still impose themselves by their grandiose and formidable aspects, more than by time. It seems that the century that saw their birth was hard, somber and inexorable with them. But from that one must not conclude that the discovery of the printing press, by any stretch of the mind, simplified art in architecture.
No! Art, part of creativity, will always be religious, political, military, democratic or monarchist. Art and printing press have their own roles. Not willing to be excessively technical, one must not confound the objective of each thing. One must only say that different skills and manifestations of the human mind must not be mixed.
Robert de Luzarches
