While in college, I did a fascinating research
project that has never been published.
It’s A Reading of the Parlement of
Foules—one of Chaucer’s early dream poems (The Parliament of the Fowls). It taught me many things. I
introduced you to Augustine of Hippo from that poem, a few entries back. He
“shoved” the dreaming Chaucer into “the Garden.” We planned to return to the
Garden, and here we are.
Chaucer says he can see birds and rabbits and
squirrels and other animals. There are trees of various kinds with leaves always fresh and green. The air is never
too hot or too cold and no one there grows sick or old. What a fabulous changeless
scene! One might visualize the “vitality of a garden captured in stone.”
We
would not be the first to have such a vision. Emile Mâle, an art historian of
the Middle Ages, said “the medieval artist wove a garland of all living things
-- plants, animals, beautiful creatures grew under his fingers. . . .Through
them the cathedral became a living thing, a gigantic tree full of birds and
flowers, less like a work of man than of nature.”
And Goethe,
in 1775, said medieval craftsmen captured “vitality in stone and glass and iron
in constructing a cathedral—a most sublime wide-arching Tree of God, with a
thousand boughs, a million twigs.” If you can picture the cathedral this way,
you are in good company.
Where would we find such a garden with an
abiding presence of Augustine—in a medieval cathedral? The most prominent
cathedral in Chaucer’s day was Notre Dame of Paris, not only because of the
magnificence of its structure, but, what is more important, because of its
authority. The school of Notre Dame de
Paris was the second oldest University in Europe. Vast numbers of popes,
intellectuals and royalty were educated there. It was particularly recognized
for theology and philosophy. Notre Dame was the most authoritative voice in Paris.
And Paris was the most authoritative voice in the Church. Augustine would feel
quite at home there, I’m sure.
As I read Chaucer’s lines, he seemed to say
that “the Garden” (the cathedral) was on
an island! “Odd,” I thought.
A gardyn saw I, ful of blosmy
bowes,
|
Upon a river, in a grene mede,
|
Not until some time later, when I found an
extended view of Notre Dame in Paris, did I see that it is, indeed, on an island in the Seine!