Selections from Section 7
While architecture designed the space for worship,
gradually the need to contemplate the mystery
and to present it explicitly to the simple people
led to the early forms of painting and sculpture.
There appeared as well the first elements of art
in word and sound.
Among the many themes treated by Augustine
we find De Musica;
and Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Prudentius,
Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory of Nazianzus
and Paulinus of Nola, to mention but a few,
promoted a Christian poetry which was often
of high quality not just as theology
but also as literature.
Their poetic work valued forms
inherited from the classical authors,
but was nourished by the pure sap of the Gospel,
as Paulinus of Nola put it succinctly:
“Our only art is faith and our music Christ”….
A little later,
Gregory the Great compiled the Antiphonarium
and thus laid the ground for the organic development
of that most original sacred music
which takes its name from him.
Gregorian chant, with its inspired modulations,
was to become down the centuries
the music of the Church's faith
in the liturgical celebration of the sacred mysteries.
The “beautiful” was thus wedded to the “true”,
so that through art too souls might be lifted up
from the world of the senses to the eternal.