Truly was St. Peter's Church the last great achievement of the popes, the crowning demonstration of their temporal dominion;suggestive of their wealth and power, a marble history of pride and pomp, a fitting emblem of that worship which appeals to sense rather than to God. And singular it was, when the great artist reared that gigantic pile, even though it symbolized the cross, he really gave a vital wound to that cause to which he consecrated his noblest energies; for its lofty dome could not be completed without the contributions of Christendom, and those contributions could not be made without an appeal to perversions which grew out of Mediaeval Catholicism,--even penance and self-expiation, which stirred the holy indignation of a man who knew and declared on what different ground justification should be based. Thus was Luther, in one sense, called into action by the labors of Michael Angelo;thus was the erection of St. Peter's Church overruled in the preaching of reformers, who would show that the money obtained by misinterpreted "indulgences" could never purchase an acceptable offering to God, even though the monument were filled with Christian emblems, and consecrated by those prayers and anthems which had been the life of blessed saints and martyrs for more than a thousand years.
St. Peter's is not Gothic, it is a restoration of the Greek; it belongs to what artists call the Renaissance,--a style of architecture marked by a return to the classical models of antiquity. Michael Angelo brought back to civilization the old ideas of Grecian grace and Roman majesty,--typical of the original inspirations of the men who lived in the quiet admiration of eternal beauty and grace; the men who built the Parthenon, and who shaped pillars and capitals and entablatures in the severest proportions, and fitted them with ornaments drawn from the living world,--plants and animals, especially images of God's highest work, even of man; and of man not worn and macerated and dismal and monstrous, but of man when most resplendent in the perfections of the primeval strength and beauty. He returned to a style which classical antiquity carried to great perfection, but which had been neglected by the new Teutonic nations.
Nor is there evidence that Michael Angelo disdained the creations especially seen in those Gothic monuments which are still the objects of our admiration. Who does not admire the church architecture of the Middle Ages? Of its kind it has never been surpassed. Geometry and art--the true and the beautiful--meet.
Nothing ever erected by the hand of man surpasses the more famous cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the richness and variety of their symbolic decorations. They typify the great ideas of Christianity; they inspire feelings of awe and reverence;they are astonishing structures, in their magnitude and in their effect. Monuments are they of religious zeal and poetical inspiration,--the creations of great artists, although we scarcely know their names; adapted to the uses designed; the expression of consecrated sentiments; the marble history of the ages in which they were erected,--now heavy and sombre when society was enslaved and mournful; and then cheerful and lofty when Christianity was joyful and triumphant. Who ever was satisfied in contemplating the diversified wonders of those venerable structures? Who would lose the impression which almost overwhelmed the mind when York minster, or Cologne, or Milan, or Amiens was first beheld, with their lofty spires and towers, their sculptured pinnacles, their flying buttresses, their vaulted roofs, their long arcades, their purple windows, their holy altars, their symbolic carvings, their majestic outlines, their grand proportions!
But beautiful, imposing, poetical, and venerable as are these hoary piles, they are not the all in all of art. Suppose all the buildings of Europe the last four hundred years had been modelled from these churches, how gloomy would be our streets, how dark and dingy our shops, how dismal our dwellings, how inconvenient our hotels! A new style was needed, at least as a supplement of the old,--as lances and shields were giving place to fire-arms, and the line and the plummet for the mariner's compass; as a new civilization was creating new wants and developing the material necessities of man.
So Michael Angelo arose, and revived the imperishable models of the classical ages,--to be applied not merely to churches but to palaces, civic halls, theatres, libraries, museums, banks,--all of which have mundane purposes. The material world had need of conveniences, as much as the Mediaeval age had need of shrines.
Humanity was to be developed as well as the Deity to be worshipped.
The artist took the broadest views, looking upon Gothic architecture as but one division of art,--even as truth is greater than any system, and Christianity wider than any sect. O, how this Shakspeare of art would have smiled on the vague and transcendental panegyrics of Michelet or Ruskin, and other sentimental admirers of an age which never can return! And how he might have laughed at some modern enthusiasts, who trace religion to the disposition of stones and arches, forgetting that religion is an inspiration which comes from God, and never from the work of man's hands, which can be only a form of idolatry.