Them
One September when my wife and I entered the twelfth century cathedral of Ravello (a terraced town overlooking the Mediterranean south of Naples) we were struck by the beauty of its tall white walls and timbered ceiling and especially by the high pulpit, which stood to the right of the central aisle. The pulpit’s sculpted stone was inlaid with gold mosaics woven around a mosaic of the Madonna. It was supported by six spiraling columns each of which rested upon the back of a prowling marble lion.
But what gave us initial pause were the strains of Schubert’s Panis Angelicus sung by a soprano voice coming from behind the front pillars of the church. I thought it was a tape played for the benefit of visitors. Advancing toward the main altar, we discovered it to be the actual voice of a young woman practicing for a festival. We then turned to view a side altar and were startled to see a middle-aged woman in a flowery skirt standing on a high ledge of the altar, dusting the lattice work beneath a Renaissance painting. What with her colorful skirt it was difficult at first to distinguish her from all the other art work – until she smiled and waved her dust rag.
Such delightful experiences were not unusual, for Jane and I were left continually astounded by one such cathedral or chapel after another, fresh with flowers, loaded with artistic expressions of faith dating from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. And I had to think: when we study the history of the Church during those centuries, all we read about are continual conflict between the Popes and German Emperors, controversies over discipline, one Pope living in Avignon and another in Italy, holy wars against heretics and Turks. We read about the Borgias and Colonnas and Medicis seeking the papacy by hook or by crook; and about a not so Innocent VIII and Alexander VI and about Pope Julius II decked out in armor to resist the armies of the King of France – all of which contributed to the Reformation which left Europe broken and bleeding right down into the twentieth century. And you have to ask yourself: under such administration, how in heaven’s name did the Church survive!
And then you look at these gems, these sanctuaries with their fresh flowers and tenderly set mosaics and ruby windows and frescos and interior domes so painted with clouds and sky and an ascending Christ so that you almost conclude there’s no dome at all; it’s a veritable glimpse of heaven. And you hear that soprano voice and you see that woman dusting away and you realize: this is why the Church survived! Not because of its hierarchical politics but because of these sacramental chambers wherein the invincible faith of its women and creative visionaries has remained so evident and alive.
And as regards that woman dusting away! She reminds me a bit of Dolly Winthrop in Silas Marner. Now nowhere in the Gospel will you hear Jesus say, “Thou art Dolly and upon this Rock I will build my Church.” And yet it’s such matriarchal Dolly’s of our past to whom we owe so much – who brought a despairing Silas Marner Christmas cakes with I.H.S. imprinted on them, assuring him that whativer the letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and who assured him that if he were to get to church and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen’, you’d be a deal the better, and you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i’ Them as knows better nor we do . . . She always referred to God as Them – which in its blend of intimacy and reverence must have pleased God more than all the highfalutin titles given him by philosophers and theologians.