Guillaume Durand’s Rational des Divins Offices (Paris, c.1410)
Born in about 1230,
William survived nearly to the end of the century (1296) and lived an adventurous
and productive life as a canon lawyer, advisor to several popes, bishop,
administrator of the Papal States, and (in this last capacity) warrior. He also
found time to write, and his Rationale Divinorum Officium is one of our two
major sources for information on the Western liturgy of the Middle Ages. It is
in this work that William gives the rationale for the use of art in the church.
He begins by repeating the standard Western defense of the use of images,
current since the time of the iconoclast controversy, and repeated ever since
then: “Pictures and ornaments in churches are the lessons and the scriptures
of the laity.” He then quotes Gregory the Great, the authority for this idea: “For
what writing supplies to the person who can read, that does a picture supply
to the one who is unlearned, and can only look. Because they who are uninstructed
thus can see what they ought to follow: and things are read though
letters are unknown.” But even while appealing to the authority of Gregory,
Durand actually goes far beyond him in what follows:
The Agathensian Creed forbids pictures in churches: and also that
that which is worshipped and adored should be painted on the
walls. But Gregory says that pictures are not to be done away with
because they are not to be worshipped: for paintings appear to move
the mind more than descriptions: for deeds are placed before the
eyes in paintings, and so appear to be actually going on. But in
description, the deed is done as it were by hearsay: which affects
the mind less when recalled to memory. Hence also it is that in
churches we pay less reverence to books than to images and pictures
Viladesau, Richard.
The beauty of the cross: the passion of Christ in theology and the arts,
from the catacombs to the eve of the Renaissance