In
class, we got swept up in the novelty of Henry Adams’s depiction of Mary as a
symbol, her sex, or a force; I think this distracted us from Adams’s deepest
concerns. Although he significantly misunderstands the tradition, that would be
of no surprise to him, since his primary experience of the Marian tradition is
alienation. Of the “highest energy ever known to man, the creator of
four-fifths of his noblest art,” Adams “knew something of the facts, but
nothing of the feelings; he read the letter, but he never felt the law. Before
this historical chasm, a mind like that of Adams felt itself helpless” (The Education of Henry Adams, 384-5). While
deeply aware of, and overcome by, the Virgin’s significance, he feels unable to
access her like the cathedral-builders did - he almost envies them: “illusion
for illusion, - granting for the moment that Mary was an illusion, - the Virgin
Mother in this instance repaid her worshippers a larger return for their money
than the capitalist has ever been able to get” (Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, 96-97). Despite this attraction,
Adams hardly seems to entertain any doubt that the “illusion” could be anything
else. For him “poetry which was regarded as mystical in its age and which now
sounds like a nursery rhyme” has been ruined by objective advancements in
knowledge in taste (Chartres, 94). He
makes no effort to recover the tradition intellectually because he assumes that
cause is lost. At most, he can hope to feel something of what others felt: “we
are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religion generally comes unsought.
We are trying only to feel Gothic art” (Chartres,
105).
This
is not to say that Adams is a devotee of any particular philosophical trend of
his day. He doubts the possibility of anyone accessing the truth, so he looks
benignly on the apparent flaws of Medieval Christianity: “all theology and
philosophy are full of contradictions quite as flagrant and far less
sympathetic” (Chartres, 95). The
greatest influence on Adams is, at this point, that of modern science. Troubled
by new discoveries and doctrines, such as Darwin’s, he struggles to see any
true meaning in the world. He sees it as amoral, and he envies the Medievals
for their ignorance of this fact. His unmooring is revealed in his inability to
understand even his area of expertise, history. Although he tries to “follow
the track of the energy” of the Virgin through history, Adams finds that the
result “depends more on what is struck out than on what is left in: on the
sequence of the main lines of thought than on their play or variety” (389-390).
He can identify no causation in history, never mind direction or meaning. We
somehow arrived where we are, and that is not a very good thing in his view. In
commenting on the architecture, he comments on modernity:
“every
day, as the work went on, the Virgin was present, directing the architects, and
it is that direction that we are going to study, if you have now got a
realizing sense of what it meant. Without this sense, the church is dead. Most
persons of a deeply religious nature would tell you emphatically that nine
churches out of ten actually were dead-born, after the thirteenth century, and
that church architecture became a pure matter of mechanism and mathematics” (Chartres, 102).
Since, according to Adams, this
religious sense that inspired Chartres is dead, the human accomplishments of
his day must be understood as an uninspired “matter of mechanism and
mathematics.” For this reason, he likes the Virgin best of all his forces: “Adams
knew nothing about any of them, but as a mathematical problem of influence on
human progress, though all were occult, all reached on his mind, and he rather
inclined to think the Virgin easiest to handle” (Education, 389). However,
this preference is in some sense disingenuous. While he sees the Virgin
“looking down from a deserted heaven, into an empty church, on a dead faith” (Chartres, 186), the dynamo is still
mysterious and powerful. It frightens him, and it promises an uncertain future.
He is overcome by it, and “before the end, [he] began to pray to it; inherited
instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force”
(Education, 380) Although he does not
love the dynamo, Adams believes it is alive and the Virgin is dead.
Once
it is clear that Adams is responding to a new state in human knowledge, Munificentissimus Deus appears to be
almost a direct response. Although Pius XII is writing ostensibly about Mary,
he explicitly grounds the constitution in recent history: “Just like the
present age, our pontificate is weighed down by ever so many cares, anxieties,
and troubles, by reason of very severed calamities that have taken place and by
reason of the fact that many have strayed away from truth and virtue” (2). To
any reader in 1950, the context would be obvious: Two World Wars, the
Holocaust, an economic depression, the rise of communism. Pius XII believes
these events were made possible by materialism, and he sees that their horror
makes people question whether there is any meaning, any moral force to the
universe. His dogmatic definition, while in content Marian, is ultimately a
statement about humans and their relationship to the world: “Thus, while the
illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals that follows
from these teachings threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and to ruin the
lives of men by exciting discord among them, in this magnificent way all may
see clearly to what a lofty goal our bodies and souls are destined. Finally it
is our hope that belief in Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven will make our
belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective” (42). In
addition, Pius XII implicitly responds to Adams’s concerns in the body of the
constitution. By grounding the definition in history the liturgy, nearly all of
the Doctors of the Church, and the Bible, he demonstrates the reasonability of
belief, as well as its constancy throughout history. Where Adams is adrift in a
sea of doubt and confusion produced by modernity, Pius XII offers the Church,
guided by Mary, as a latter day Noah’s ark:
“Since
the universal Church, within which dwells the Spirit of Truth who infallibly
directs it toward an ever more perfect knowledge of the revealed truths, has
expressed its own belief many times over the course of the centuries, and since
the bishops of the entire world are almost unanimously petitioning that the
truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven should be
defined as a dogma of divine and Catholic faith—this truth which is based on
the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which
has been approved in ecclesiastical worship form the most remote times, which
is completely in harmony with the other revealed truths, and which has beene expounded
and explained magnificently in the work, the science, and the wisdom of the
theologians – we believe that the moment appointed in the plan of divine providence
for the solemn proclamation of this outstanding privilege of the Virgin Mary
has already arrive” (41).
--MD
I have to confess that I had not previously considered Adams' description of Mary as symbol in quite the detail that we did on Tuesday, in large part because previously I have tended to read Adams more as you do here--as somewhat wistful about not being able to make sense of Mary, even as he (in effect) belittles her ("makes her little") and her cathedral. On the one hand, in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, he talks about the faith that built the cathedral as having died, but in The Education, he seems convinced that something of its force can still be understood, if only by analogy to the dynamo. Alas, for all that we can see how far his understanding has come from the medieval sources that we have been reading, I myself more often than not fear that Adams is right: we (modern Anglo-American culture) have lost something in the transition to industrialized, largely Protestant modernity that makes understanding the appeal of Mary for pre-modern Christians extremely difficult. I think, too, that you are absolutely right in your reading of Pius XII's concerns to counter the doubt and confusion that Adams experienced. The question is whether Pius himself succeeded in answering these concerns. You conclude by citing him, but I would be interested whether you find yourself convinced. RLFB
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you described Henry James’ reactions to Mary here. James’ reactions in to Mary in The Education of Henry Adams are not based off scriptural readings strictly per se, as you point to when he says he knew something of the “facts”. We talked about in the beginning of the quarter about how these “facts” are troublesome as historical materials, and James might be struggling with Mary because of how he views the scriptures from a historians point of view. James’ reactions also do not appear based off Church leaders, or Church documents, which have been what we’ve been basing our historical arguments on. I think this is why I think the class found him a little bizarre. Henry James’ history is about himself, and his historical basis is his experiences. His writings describe his understanding as confused about what the powers of both technology (the dynamos), and religion (Mary) are. It is not surprising that James is a bit confused by Mary in religion as he has a Protestant background. James’ classical education also comes through a lot by comparing Mary to Venus, but I do not think Mary as a gendered being is completely new. Mary has been a woman the whole time, she has been the blessed women, but not a goddesses. Comparing Mary to Venus, god of love and sex is over the top, but she is mother of God, not an it who gave birth to God. I think we really focused on that in class because James’ comparison of Venus to Mary seemed bizarre, but I also think you are right in that James’ comparison was not really his argument. I think it was probably just an off of the top of head comparison to another important female figure in religion. I think you really hit the nail on the head when arguing that James’ concern in the passages we read were his confusion and despair at finding knowledge and understanding.
ReplyDeleteHPB
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ReplyDeleteI'm glad RLFB brought up this question, because I had a defiant reaction to the Church's response when we saw it in only a positive light in class. We interpreted the Pope's "Munificentissimus Deus" as an official affirmation of Mary's doctrine, and one that successfully fought back against claims such as Henry Adam's that Mary was a niche goddess irrelevant to modernity and Protestantism. However, MD, I must disagree with you that the Pope "demonstrates a reasonability of belief" in his decrees. Rather than fortifying documents, I saw his writings as weak retaliations against the strong current of the Protestant belittling of Mary. The "Munificentissimus Deus" regurgitated the defensive arguments made by past Popes, priests and Christian scholars, like John Duns Scotus. Perhaps the unification (finally!) of these scattered defensive claims was what made us accepting of this document in class, but the arguments laid out, such as that the Marian doctrine has always been around, "it seems appropriate, is wholly fitting" and thus should continue to be worshipped, are trite. Using Scotus's and others' claims as the primary argument and scripture as secondary, rather than reversing the order of importance and persuasiveness, was also a poor strategy. In addition, rather than addressing skeptics like Henry Adams and Bernard of Clairveaux with rebuttles of their arguments, the Church desperately reiterates its initial claims, proving weak and ineffective in legitimizing Marian doctrine. Though I also disagree with Henry Adams's perception of Mary, I was even more so wholly unconvinced of the Church's defense of the Annunciation.
ReplyDelete-ALZ
I think you've captured very well here the tension in Adams' writing, this tension between Mary as dynamo, an awe-inspiring, driving cultural force, and his insistence that Mary is this illusion which keeps people in ignorance. This tug between Adams' romanticization of the Medieval mind (and, to some extent, Medieval theology and “ignorance”) and his own fears is what makes this account so compelling to general readers and such a misrepresentation of the Marian traditions. As you point out, Adams sees himself as an enlightened, educated historian viewing a site built for an occult dynamo, a force that exists outside of any proper modern understanding, and yet it is this modern understanding that leaves him cold. He envies the “deal” that he believes the Medieval believers received, where their belief, admittedly a belief in an illusion, permeated Chartes, even in every moment of its construction. It's this grounding in belief, false though he considers hit, that makes Mary the great dynamo that built cathedrals that steam cannot. I doubt that Adams would argue that steam could not build Chartes, obviously people in his time had the technology to do so with more ease than their predecessors, but steam would not build Chartes: an engine that provides cultural motivation. Unfortunately, as easy as it is to fall into these romantic revelries, it is easy to fall into these misrepresentations of the Marian traditions. -ZSR
ReplyDeleteI think you've captured very well here the tension in Adams' writing, this tension between Mary as dynamo, an awe-inspiring, driving cultural force, and his insistence that Mary is this illusion which keeps people in ignorance. This tug between Adams' romanticization of the Medieval mind (and, to some extent, Medieval theology and “ignorance”) and his own fears is what makes this account so compelling to general readers and such a misrepresentation of the Marian traditions. As you point out, Adams sees himself as an enlightened, educated historian viewing a site built for an occult dynamo, a force that exists outside of any proper modern understanding, and yet it is this modern understanding that leaves him cold. He envies the “deal” that he believes the Medieval believers received, where their belief, admittedly a belief in an illusion, permeated Chartes, even in every moment of its construction. It's this grounding in belief, false though he considers hit, that makes Mary the great dynamo that built cathedrals that steam cannot. I doubt that Adams would argue that steam could not build Chartes, obviously people in his time had the technology to do so with more ease than their predecessors, but steam would not build Chartes: an engine that provides cultural motivation. Unfortunately, as easy as it is to fall into these romantic revelries, it is easy to fall into these misrepresentations of the Marian traditions. -ZSR
ReplyDeleteYour observation about the deeper concerns and shifts that Henry Adams brings to the discussion of Mary is very helpful, yet it should be said that without his participation in the Mary-as-*woman* movement within modernity Adams would not have impacted the history of Mary as significantly. Without Adams’ novel articulation of the theory that Mary stood so preeminently over the history of Europe that she created her own weight – independent of the Church even – as a woman, the development of this strain into the likes of Mary Daly and Marina Warner may not have materialized. Adams’ claim that Mary became the Queen of France in a fashion so regal and overpowering as to inspire artistic endeavors can aptly be noted as his central focus – as M.D. acknowledges – yet in the transition through modernity to postmodernity the significance of Adams as a historian undoubtedly rests much more in his incorporation of the feminine vocabulary into his portrait of Mary.
ReplyDeleteW.K.
This post and the conversations around it are interesting because the issue they raise is greater than just Marian devotion. I see Henry Adams as believing that the underlying occult, life-giving forces that power the Western mind have been transmigrated from one object of devotion into another. This general metempsychosis from the Virgin Mary into modern technology, if that really is the right word to use, points to an even larger shift, one that encompasses how we think about the world, religion, morality, and even ourselves. I don't read Adams as feeling nostalgic or trying to recapture the past, but admiring the various forms this ahistorical "force" has taken across history. This isn't to say that Adam's discussion of Mary as a gendered Venus is just window-dressing; rather, he sees Mary's womanhood as an essential part of this premodern dynamo, though he might have argued it clumsily.
ReplyDeleteThen again, how else could someone like Adams treat the subject of Mary's gender? With Mary no longer where she was in the medieval cosmology, how can we even think about femininity the same way? Adams, both directly and indirectly, points to a categorical shift in the way we look at devotion, and all the things it entails, and I'm inclined to believe that Adams was right. To some extent having "faith" (in the sense we discussed in class), as well as letting Pius XII's arguments resonate with us, entails letting go of some of the modern prejudices we hold. Letting go of modern prejudices is something we've attempted to do for the whole class, but I doubt if we can fully comprehend Mary the way a medieval devotee could, or even Pope Pius.
F.G.