When we first started talking about the additions to Christianity made by Hugh of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux as springing from a similar emotional place as whatever inspires people to write “Fan Fiction”, I was a bit taken back. I’ve always thought of Fan Fiction as a genre written by thirty-something year old men with neckbeards fantasizing about their favorite Anime heroines, not something that my fellow UChicago students, let alone great medieval thinkers, participated in. However, after some thinking, I’ve begun to see how my own experiences with fiction can help me to understand the desire that motivated medieval Christian writings and art.
When I was a kid, like 9 or 10 years old, I loved Redwall by Brian Jacques, a story about a community of peaceful mice that fought off an evil army of rats. I would always dream of getting teleported to the land of Redwall - sometimes I would tell myself that if I played a piece on my saxophone without squeaking, my wish would come true. Unfortunately, I was good enough to prove that my wish could not come true. In many ways, this experience mirrors the writings of Bernard. He states “Furthermore if you look back on your own experience, is it not in that victory by which your faith overcomes the world, in ‘your exit from the horrible pit and out of the slough of the marsh’, that you yourselves sing a new song to the Lord for all the marvels he has performed?” (Bernard of Clairvaux, 5). Bernard here draws on the reader’s experience with faith to affirm the importance of worshipping God. He believes that this experience is the best teacher of the idea that “For every benefit conferred, God is to be praised in his gifts” (6). Bernard’s language emphasizes his deep love for God, and the importance he attaches to experience highlights the extent to which he believes that God can be clearly present in an individual’s life. Bernard’s love for God is analogous to my childhood love for Redwall, and his desire to see God in one’s own life is similar to my desire to transport myself to the world of Redwall, for both envision a connection where the desirer moves closer, in a physical sense, to what he desires. But just like how I ran into problems when I completed my beginner pieces flawlessly and did not find myself in Mossflower Wood, Bernard’s belief in the importance of personal experience is also flawed. Why? Because what can he say to someone who has never experienced “the victory by which [their] faith overcomes the world?” This is not to refute Bernard’s work, but instead to show that, in his attempt to bring readers closer to God, he relies upon them being pretty close to God to begin with, or at least close enough to have experienced the victory of faith over the world. Bernard’s entire process is one of the worshipper themselves moving closer to God, progressing from the first kiss to the final “kiss of the mouth.” Yet this is not the only medieval way of bringing a person closer to God, and I believe the best way to introduce the alternative concept, that of bringing God closer to the individual, is to again look at my own experiences with fiction.
When I was 19, I got a hernia playing basketball. During my recovery, when I realized I didn’t have a whole lot of hobbies besides playing basketball and going to the gym and when I was not the happiest at school, I fell in love with a TV show a friend showed me. I’m not going to say the name of the show after my introductory comment about neckbearded Anime fans, but I loved the characters in a way I hadn’t loved characters since I was a little kid, and after I finished I spent a long time trying to draw lessons from the show that I could use to make my life better. I had the same yearning that I had as a kid for Redwall, but instead of trying to escape my life, I tried to bring the work of fiction I loved into my life. The equivalent works in the medieval Christian world are the cathedral reliefs that Mâle analyzes, for in their attempt to bring God closer to the individual, they mirror my attempt to find lessons for my own life in a work I loved. According to Mâle, cathedral reliefs are methods of communicating Christian virtues that draw inspiration from the Bible. Describing Perseverance, he notes “On her shield she bears a crown, for says St. John in the Apocalypse ‘Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.’ Two further attributes, less clear at first sight, complete her characterization. A lion’s head, apparently cut off from his body, appears at the top of the composition and a lion’s tail is on the shield. The head and the tail are the beginning and the end — a naïve hieroglyphic by which the artists would say perseverance is needed from the first day of life until the last” (127). The relief thus uses symbols to communicate ideas from St. John’s Revelation; it is an attempt to add to the “universe” of Christianity by anthropomorphizing the virtues while alluding to fundamental Christian texts, ultimately with the purpose of teaching these stories to viewers. Instead of trying to show the viewer how to find God, the cathedral teaches God’s wishes in a relatable way.
As I grew up, I learned how to understand fiction. I still sometimes feel the deep desire to immerse myself in a make believe world, and that’s probably the desire that Fan Fiction writers feel when they add to a world’s story. But I believe that the more adult approach is to bring that make believe world into your own life and to recognize that what makes these stories beautiful is their treatment of universal truths existing in our own world. In a similar way, I believe that Bernard of Clairvaux, while writing a beautiful treatment of God and the song of songs, has a less sophisticated approach to adding to Christianity than the cathedral makers. Bernard shows people a path that they can follow to move closer to God, but the French cathedrals show God’s connection to human virtue, and in doing so, they teach people of God’s goodness. In their beauty and the values they communicate, they bring God into our own world.
JW
References
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs I: Sermons 1-20, trans. Kilian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981),
Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century (alt. The Gothic Image), trans. Dora Nussey (first published New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1913)
Your experience with Redwall has more in common with Bernard's than you might think! Remember the evil rat, Cluny? The monastery of Cluny was the great rival of the Cistercians—at least, according to the Cistercians. Cluny was famous for the elaboration of its liturgy, while the Cistercians claimed to be observing the Rule of St. Benedict in its original humility. I am intrigued that you thought that playing the saxophone—making music—was the way to find yourself inside the story. This, as we have talked about, was exactly what the singing of the liturgy in which the monks were engaged was about. And do you remember what Redwall was? An abbey!
ReplyDeleteYour experience reading stories when you were injured has another interesting parallel: it is how Ignatius Loyola came to convert. After being injured in battle, he spent the months he was confined to bed reading the lives of the saints from the Golden Legend.
I am not sure that you have not proved your contrary: your own experience has given you the key to the books!
RLFB