The Great Thousand Years

By Ralph Adams Cram (Boston, 1918 – with Ten Years After)

St. John the Divine, New York

St. John the Divine, New York (including images of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Theresa!)

St. John the Divine, New York

“In a way the eleventh century may be considered one of the most marvelous centuries in all history: everything happened and all at once. The monks of Cluny, Benedictines, were the driving impulse….”

“Catholic civilization after a thousand years of preparation, had blossomed in the white flower of Medievalism; comparable therewith there was nothing in any history that had gone before. When in 1270, St. Louis, the perfect king in Christendom, went to his eternal reward, the climax had been reached: more man could not achieve than had already been won.”

“With them came into the world such other fruits of Catholic civilization as Joan of Arc, Savonarola, Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, the chevalier Bayard, S. Ignatius Loyola, S. Philip Neri, but simultaneously those whose destiny it was to bring the great epoch to an end in ignorance, anarchy and apostasy: Luther, Macchiavelli (sic), Cranmer, Crumwell (sic), Henry VIII and the spawn of the House of Borgia.”

You may be wondering at the source of these lines. Are they taken from an essay of Belloc or even Pugin? Or perhaps from an old fashioned Catholic history manual, like The Greatest of Centuries? Or even, more currently, from one of the “integrist” or “Rad Trad” publications like The Remnant?

But the author is Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942), the preeminent builder of sacred and collegiate architecture for the American establishment between 1890 and the 1930’s. The Anglican Cram, the architect of St. John the Divine, St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue, much of Princeton University, Philips Exeter Academy and innumerable other prestigious commissions, forcefully advocates in this book a view of history and art more consistent with the thought of Chesterton and Belloc than with the theories of modernity in 1920 or later. That a man of such “countercultural” (and publicly expressed) views could enjoy such an exalted (and lucrative) career evidences the unimaginable changes in American society and ideology from 1930 to the present. For when these words were written the ideologues of modernity occupied only a fringe position in the US. It was only later, after 1945, that “modern art” assumed a quasi-totalitarian dominance on these shores.

The same is true in religion. For as late as 1940 hadn’t Manning, the Episcopalian bishop of New York –not Spellman – intervened to prevent Bertrand Russell from obtaining a position at the City University? This same Manning made the case for continuing to build great cathedrals(St. John the Divine), battled various liturgical dissidents and criticized the “laxity” of the Vatican in granting annulments. It all seems rather surreal in the light of what is going on now 70 years later in New York City, in the Anglican church and in the Roman Catholic Church as well.

Now Cram not only used Gothic forms but, like Pugin, saw them as arising out of a uniquely Christian age. In other words, Gothic art was not just one decoratiove scheme among others but directly reflected the Christian faith itself. In The Great Thousand Years, Cram argued that Christian civilization had begun to form around 500 AD, flowered between 1000 AD and 1500 AD, and thereafter had entered a process of decomposition and collapse. In his short work Cram reviews the high points of the Christian era, emphasizing the Church as the leaven of this culture.

Yet Cram was not a pessimist but saw the seeds of renewal in those societies that had been present at the very outset of the earlier Christian age: the monasteries. It is only through reviving the virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience that the work of rebuilding the world can be commenced. Another aspect of the monastic revival was that it could serve as the pattern for the reemergence of small independent communities. Cram writes of “the necessity of destroying Imperialism and the substitution of many units of human scale. “ “The sign of the beginning of the new era is the assimilating of these (small units) into a larger unity without the surrender of independence and autonomy.” Cram here seems to be moving in the same direction as the English distributists.

These are courageous and amazing words from an artist so dependent on the patronage of the wealthiest members of American society. We should reflect on these thoughts as we observe the slow and steady formation of communities and parishes centered on the Traditional liturgy. For just as Cram placed his hopes in the revival of monasticism, so we too have chosen Cluny as our model in pursuing liturgical renewal and by so doing initiating the restoration of an entire civilization. Pope Benedict too seems to have avoided the method of mandating change from above, relying instead on community initiatives for the liturgical restoration. We would hope that, with the help of God, many more formal religious communities will arise out of all this ferment and activity to pursue this great undertaking. As Cram concludes his book:

“May the sons of St. Benedict, whatever their name and order, aid and guide us in the great work of rebuilding a world as they ever have done from the day when Benedict of Nursia went out from a crumbling Rome to the hidden cave in the Sabine hills to receive the Divine revelation of a new life for a world sick unto death. And may St. Benedict and St. Odo, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, St. Bruno, St. Francis and St. Domenic, St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Vincent de Paul pray for us and for those who come after, that the work may be well done.”