CONTEXT: Seeing this great edifice was a comfort for me, an example of truly fine German culture after my exposure to remnants of its heinous Nazi spasm in Berlin.
Further perspective about my meditation on the Kolner Dom; as I wrote this in summer 2023 at my home in Chicago, I smelled the smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away in central Canada. Those were almost certainly intensified, if not actually caused, by human-driven Global Warming, exemplifying what I have in mind as I try to make a distinction between ‘intelligence’ and ‘wisdom.’ Roughly differentiated, the first is what one Can do; the second is what one Should do.
For example, human brain power created the internet on which I post this blog. And when the web was new, few observers foresaw anything but benefits arising from it, yet it has not worked out like that (consider its impact by those who use it to sow dissent, reap ill-got gain, etc.). Technology has given many of us, in many lands, much better lives, but if presumed wholly beneficial and allowed to run free, it has/can also be instrumental in creating, stimulating and exploiting a consumerist ideal whose insatiable maw for resources is now disrupting the terrestrial cycles of our planet.
That all arose from our intelligence, but certainly not from our wisdom. A mass-culture of material goals beyond actual needs – oversized vehicles and homes, disposable appliances, energy-intensive food production – is spreading, like swamping waves, far beyond its First World origins to ever-larger segments of the world’s human population, helping to proliferate quasi-natural disasters like those Canadian fires. The very Earth is reacting to having its material gouged out, processed, and the resulting detritus expelled into its atmosphere and oceans, manifesting as rising temperatures and sea levels.
This, despite science having long known of these terrifying ecological implications – because the long view of science – and for that matter, of most religions – is no match for a hyper-energized appetite for individual validation expressed through material acquisition. It cannot offset cultural priorities in which the fulfillment of the individual, not the long-term good of the community, is the prime focus. (To say nothing of marketing by short-term focused businesses that benefit from ‘hyper-energized appetites.’)
For moderation to prevail, wisdom – ‘what one Should do’ – rather than mono-dimensional acumen used to exploit urges for immediate gratification (and revenue) must guide us. Moreover, wisdom, even when recognized, often gets ridden over. Since the Industrial Revolution, it has frequently been sidelined to pursue technologies, products, services, etc. devised to address (and profit from) some problem or aspect of Life, but distracting us from broader and deeper perceptions of it.
So sniffing that Canadian smoke makes me want to both laugh and weep at the assertion that Man is able to fully master his Fate, or even if he were, reliable to use that mastery appropriately while still so in thrall to self-interest. Our knowledge of physical reality has increased throughout time, but our control over it remains marginal; that is, we can better observe our physical World, but we didn’t make it, and our role in its unfolding has long been trivial. Up to now, when our misuse of much of that knowledge has made us become substantially destructive.
Thus, those flames in Canada may portend our vanities making a bonfire of us, rather than the other way round.
As an alternative to validation by materialism or cravings for self-involved fulfillment, I remind readers of the ingrained human heritage of pondering and valuing the immaterial, as the Kolner Dom does, though in stone, slate and glass. I noted in my January 1, 2023 post, ‘Entrancing’ (which I encourage you to read after this one), that all the life-improving knowledge modern science has gained for us has not truly altered our immutable relationship with eternity – Mortality – even as it has distorted it, by postponement. That elongation may have persuaded us to believe that mortality is a reality not worth contemplating because it is, in a rational sense, ‘immutable.’
But places like this cathedral were meant to confront that issue in ways from which we today, believing we control Nature as much as we need to (or at least as much as possible) might shrink. The imperative that drove its construction was a belief that, fundamentally, human activity was peripheral to inconceivably more encompassing forces of Creation. Such sacred spaces seek to define a role – for humans and for humanity – within that only semi-autonomous context.
In that interpretation, ‘Existence’ is an enterprise whose purpose is immeasurably more complex and wondrous than any and all of its discrete mechanisms that we may ever discover; they are not its ‘meaning,‘ its underlying and overarching significance. Like some great spaceship, Existence’s actual purpose bodes to be far more than its separate parts might suggest, awesome beyond human quantification, substitution or emulation.
But not beyond human contemplation; not if we avail ourselves of doing so.
If we cannot evade physical Death no matter how long we can forestall it, visions of Life like those which summoned and raised this church assert that our awareness of mortality may serve a positive purpose. In its Christian context, a hope of Salvation as reward, but conceptually, a dimension in which whatever good we do in this world doesn’t simply vanish with us. Including love we have of others, be they family, friends, or everyone; for love beyond the Self is too worthy and vitalizing to be accepted as some mere ephemerality.
Thus, having some degree of care and acts for the benefit of others can expand our Being to overlap with theirs, and thus enlarge who we are beyond the boundaries of our own organism. And fixating on ‘our own organism’ (far beyond self-preservation) has been no small part of the impulse driving those forest fires, as results of the exaltation of the individual being presumed preeminent (and also quantifiably profitable).
The Nazis, it should be remembered, detested any ideas of love beyond one’s own ‘Volk’ – ‘Race’ – as ludicrous affronts to the eat-or-be-eaten laws of Nature, and intended to root them out of German thought, society and culture (for example, Hitler famously called conscience ‘a Jewish invention’). It may be instructive to bear in mind how such terrible men, heartlessly focused on the good of their own rather than of Mankind, viewed empathy-based religions or philosophies; and on the unspeakable values they felt should replace them.
Nazism could not respect anyone who might need or benefit from the consolations, and propulsion, of extra-factual faith to face, and even exceed, the challenges of this life. In Nazism, there was only a primal pursuit of domination.
‘Anachronism’ is generally understood as something that is out of its own time, but I suggest it may also be something that is out of – beyond – time itself. Like the ageless treasure of transcending our impulses and narrow logic, both of which helped lead to, and facilitate, those Climate Change-intensified Canadian fires (and a host of other events caused by that same menace), to care for that which is beyond one’s Self alone.
The Nazis are gone, but the Dom remains, honoring the coming into the world of One believed to personify love beyond one’s Self, a consummation that we all, and each, are right to pursue. By following any path that is best for us individually, as those who conceived, built – and needed – the Dom, and its proffered reassurance, followed theirs.
Gothic churches were designed with powerful upward optics to suggest ascent to Heaven, and Cologne is surely one of the most successful examples of that intent. This is still a functioning church, and this image of its nave was taken from just inside its main entrance.
As a child, I had an unusual fascination with Gothic architecture. Back then I saw pictures of this interior, and so assumed I knew, more or less, what to expect when seeing the actual place. But I was wrong; no photograph could prepare me for its full, unfolding and enfolding reality, my presumptions brushed aside by the limpid intensity of the actual encounter. All churches of this style follow this basic template, but Cologne is one of its greatest achievements to proclaim a sacred space.
Upon entering, the sweep of its elemental verticality, softly augmented by the shimmering lavender haze of its stone and austere, yet sensual jewel-like glow through spare stained glass, was literally staggering; its time-stopping tranquility halted me in my tracks a few feet inside the door. My breath was gently squeezed out as if stepping up onto some threshold from one dimension to another, leaving me slightly panting with genuine awe, hushed and possibly on the cusp of a sob. It was arresting, but not intimidating.
The space seemed to absorb all noise of others present with a sense of sacred awe; if Eternity has a sound, it seemed that I was hearing it at that moment; non-substantial, yet mighty. And those were all fitting effects for a structure conceived as a regal repose for presumed relics of men who had knelt before the newborn Jesus, at a time when Western culture generally saw such objects as inexpressibly sacred milestones on a path to Paradise, a goal more easily sought and sustained in a setting like the Dom.
I admit to being more suggestible to such effects than many people, but here, that proved an asset, not a vulnerability. I have often been in ‘holy’ sites before, but this engagement felt truly different, and deeper in scope, like what can happen if sensibility is given leave to surpass rationality. That is not some inherently bad thing, when it is consoling and strengthening, beyond the harsh dictates of verifiable evidence – which is not necessarily proof.
This view faces the apse, the oldest part of the cathedral. It seemed melancholy that no one in the Medieval era, so largely dependent on religious faith to give meaning and resolution to human consciousness, ever got to see this vista. As noted in a prior post, the Dom was not completed until long after the worldview that spawned it was no longer predominant (if never entirely gone). For 300 years, the front end of the building, where this picture was taken was unfinished, with a low, wooden ceiling above it, surely blocking this sight of the high, graceful arc of the apse. Only in the mid-19th century were the entire nave, with this stunning view, fully realized as a pinnacle articulation of the Gothic aesthetic; and vision.
There are cathedrals with higher ceilings than Cologne’s, but its nave has the most extreme height-to-width ratio of any in the world. This vertiginous impression is enhanced by its configuration; it is relatively short, with only five bays of windows in front of the transept and four behind it. In most Gothic churches, the nave between the entrance and the transepts is longer, making the building look like a cross from overhead; Cologne looks almost like a plus sign. This abbreviation increases the already insistent sense of the ceiling’s altitude, and may have been the visual purpose for such horizontal compression. The interior proportions are ideal to seem intimate yet uplifting, not merely cavernous.
Polite, red-robed ushers answered questions and urged decorum, but for the latter, they hardly seemed to be needed. A space like this may leave a viewer speechless, whatever his or her everyday beliefs. Most visitors were at least quieted – if less dramatically so than my own reflex intake of breath, which had felt acute enough to seemingly draw me upward as the interior’s architecture pulls the eye.
During the Middle Ages, the exteriors of large churches were often likened to great ships, vessels to navigate the currents and storms of this world, and carry the righteous faithful – saved from its ordeals – safely to a longed-for port. Conversely, their serene interiors could hint at the security of the womb. And like a womb, this soaring, exquisite void feels as potent as the premise it is meant to convey: A life force opposed to the extinguishing power of the grave. It defines an embracing enclosure whose scale and sheltering volume allude to a root benevolence of ‘Creation,’ both as verb and noun.
Such impact, beyond easy description or facile appreciation, is visceral, and must resonate with amenable visitors (willing or unguarded), possibly even startling them as it did me. Its effect on a viewer arises from more than its artful stone and glass, and effortlessly glides above full capture by words. Contrary descriptors like ‘uplifting’ and ‘reposeful’ may both seem fully appropriate, yet still feel inadequate as I struggle to describe phenomena that are inherently indefinable in any ordinary sense.
The Kolner Dom may be as effective a monumental locus as anywhere, built to entice a beholder to venture beyond an exclusively rational grasp of life and respond to what is apprehended, not just to what is understood. I have been inside other spaces held to be sacred in some sense (they need not be gigantic to be overwhelming), but none made me feel so markedly enclosed yet unconfined; so invited to merge with something infinite.
The Medieval impulse to create such places, where beholders might rejoice just for being part of the same Creation as that which inspired their marvelous surroundings, was a great communal assertion (as well as evidence by its determined ingenuity) that human existence, in reflecting the agency of a benevolent deity, has worth, validity and purpose beyond that of creatures whose only plausible objective is winning a brutish contest of prolonging their own physical lives.
Of course, for individual persons, a desire for such prolongation is both necessary and natural. But for us as a species, it is not sufficient; and filling that insufficiency, somehow, may be a worthy life goal of each of us. In places like Cologne’s St. Peter’s Cathedral, one may observe, and even share in the endeavor of embracing hope for something beyond the apparent oblivion of death and nothingness. Faith that our worth and wondrousness reside, equally, in our transient singularity and in our everlasting commonality.
The transfixing calm of this setting seemed to both summon a reflexive questioning of whether there is more to life than we can see, grasp or measure, and to reward faith that there may be. It served, to me at least, as a reassuring reminder that I am a member of a far greater whole of “Being,” a realization that may unwittingly be obscured by contemporary culture’s priority of self-actualization.
Here, faith in such is conveyed as a notion that every person is born as a Golden Link – imperishable, and worthy of the love and rescue the faithful believed Christ offered up on the Cross – of a living chain that never ends or breaks.
All Things Gaul 