DOI Artikel:
Krasny, Piotr: Źródło rozproszeń dla przywiązanych do marności świata: Rozważania św. Bernarda z Clairvaux o sztuce sakralnej w interpretacji Armanda Rancégo
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27279#0140
liturgical utensils or paintings representing sacred subjects. On the basis of a thorough
survey in the orders archival materials and an analysis of works of medieval Cistercian
art, he demonstrated that in the centuries immediately following the foundation of the
order, Cistercians had faithfully adhered to the‘artistic doctrine’ of their founding father.
Rance appealed to his comrades and other monks to liberate their liturgical practices
from the rich artistic setting, in order to be able to return the liturgy its proper spiritual
character. He was convinced that, while proclaiming such radical teachings, he remained
faithful to Catholic orthodoxy which had established the practice of richly decorated
churches and the cult of religious images for the use of ‘lay people who by their very
condition are imperfect and who are attached to vanities, whence their piety has to be
stimulated by external things’. According to the holy tradition of the religious order,
however, ‘all these things should be renounced, because not only may they distract the
monks, but also instil things in their memory and hearts that should be rejected, in
order that they do not divert the attention of monks away from the hermitage [of the
monastery] towards the world’.
Yet, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century Rances radical puritanism appealed
also to the lay members of French intellectual elites who earlier had been under the influ-
ence of Jansenist theology, which criticised excessive magnificence of sacred art. One of
them was Andre Felibien, an outstanding art theorist and secretary of the Parisian Acade-
mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The architectural forms of the Fa Trappe abbey
church, remodelled by Rance, were depicted by Felibien in his Description de YAbbaye de
la Trappe (1677) as a consistent realisation of the Cistercian reformers concept of sacred
art. Similar views were expressed by Frere Pacome (actually, Guillaume Dardenne) in his
laconic characteristic of the church and monastery at La Trappe, appended to the plans
of the buildings offered by him to King Louis XIV in 1708. Rances artistic doctrine was
also expounded in numerous pamphlets that propagated the Trappist reform among pious
female members of the aristocracy; it was further disseminated by numerous pilgrims who
freąuently yisited La Trappe in order to learn there pure piety, liberated from ‘mundane
attachments’.
Therefore, the radical interpretation of St Bernards thoughts on art included in De la
saintete et des devoirs de la vie monastiąue must have significantly influenced the development
of a conviction - widespread among enłightened French elites in the eighteenth century - that
engendering piety by means of the works of art was associated with na'ive and superficial
religiosity, and did not go with the enłightened piety of the honnetes gens. •
Translated by Joanna Wolańska
138
ARTYKUŁY
Piotr Krasny
survey in the orders archival materials and an analysis of works of medieval Cistercian
art, he demonstrated that in the centuries immediately following the foundation of the
order, Cistercians had faithfully adhered to the‘artistic doctrine’ of their founding father.
Rance appealed to his comrades and other monks to liberate their liturgical practices
from the rich artistic setting, in order to be able to return the liturgy its proper spiritual
character. He was convinced that, while proclaiming such radical teachings, he remained
faithful to Catholic orthodoxy which had established the practice of richly decorated
churches and the cult of religious images for the use of ‘lay people who by their very
condition are imperfect and who are attached to vanities, whence their piety has to be
stimulated by external things’. According to the holy tradition of the religious order,
however, ‘all these things should be renounced, because not only may they distract the
monks, but also instil things in their memory and hearts that should be rejected, in
order that they do not divert the attention of monks away from the hermitage [of the
monastery] towards the world’.
Yet, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century Rances radical puritanism appealed
also to the lay members of French intellectual elites who earlier had been under the influ-
ence of Jansenist theology, which criticised excessive magnificence of sacred art. One of
them was Andre Felibien, an outstanding art theorist and secretary of the Parisian Acade-
mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The architectural forms of the Fa Trappe abbey
church, remodelled by Rance, were depicted by Felibien in his Description de YAbbaye de
la Trappe (1677) as a consistent realisation of the Cistercian reformers concept of sacred
art. Similar views were expressed by Frere Pacome (actually, Guillaume Dardenne) in his
laconic characteristic of the church and monastery at La Trappe, appended to the plans
of the buildings offered by him to King Louis XIV in 1708. Rances artistic doctrine was
also expounded in numerous pamphlets that propagated the Trappist reform among pious
female members of the aristocracy; it was further disseminated by numerous pilgrims who
freąuently yisited La Trappe in order to learn there pure piety, liberated from ‘mundane
attachments’.
Therefore, the radical interpretation of St Bernards thoughts on art included in De la
saintete et des devoirs de la vie monastiąue must have significantly influenced the development
of a conviction - widespread among enłightened French elites in the eighteenth century - that
engendering piety by means of the works of art was associated with na'ive and superficial
religiosity, and did not go with the enłightened piety of the honnetes gens. •
Translated by Joanna Wolańska
138
ARTYKUŁY
Piotr Krasny