Roman Catholic Church Etiquette

Jesus covered for Lent
Pantheon

I first visited Rome thirty years ago, and as I wandered through the medieval streets, marveled at the facades, floors, door handles, was charmed by the Romans, brushed past young priests and was stopped by tourists for directions, I was reassured to see that not much has changed in thirty years. I was heartened by the degree to which the Romans have held onto their culture, their personality, their city as the world has changed around them.

The Floor of the Pantheon in the rain

And as was the case thirty years ago, I was astounded by the degree to which the Catholic Church defined my experience of Rome. Of course, my visit coincided with Francesco’s induction, so perhaps there was more Catholic pomp and circumstance than usual. And I have to admit that, in the moment, I was swept up by all the excitement: as I did my morning run along the Tiber on Tuesday, listening to the sounds of the Vatican choir interspersed with Francesco’s address to the world, I looked left up via della Conciliazione, and there he was up the end of the street. I almost wished I was Catholic. I also loved the familiar sight of black robed priests young and old, rushing, walking, riding mopeds and bicycles through the streets, defining the world around them.  

The floor of  Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva
 the sun shines through a stained glass window

The charm of the air pervaded by Catholicism and my enthusiasm for its rituals and cultural assets would, I am sure, wear off if I were to be anything more than a tourist in Rome. But because I have no intention of moving to Rome, I put all my prejudices and opinions aside about what must be the most oppressive institution in the world, and soaked up its riches for a few days. Along the way, I became fascinated by “church etiquette.” It started when I got very unwelcome looks from the young priests in particular. I am in Italy to look at specific frescoes, none of which are of any interest to the average tourist. And so, often the lights in the chapels with the frescoes in question were only turned on for services. So I sat with the faithful few and sometimes in a congregation of one taking notes on the frescoes while the young priests were busy at the altar. More than once I felt the eyes of judgmental surveyance directed at me. But I figured that they could never say anything to me because that would necessarily mean they were not concentrating on their prayers. Much to their chagrin, I kept writing.

The Hole
Pantheon

And then in the basilicas and churches where I joined the tourists, it was a different kind of tension between the Church and the mignons. In the oldest of old, the Pantheon, a shaft of daylight penetrates the wondrous vaulted ceiling and illuminates the world below. This architectural wonder is heaving with tourists, and so I took a seat out of the rain (because the hole in the ceiling opens the basilica to all elements, not just sunlight. My sense of the crowd was that they were very well behaved. As people do, they chatted among themselves, read their guidebooks out loud and asked me to take their photographs (somehow I became the official Pantheon photographer for all Italian tourists who needed to record their moment together with Jesus at the altar). And then, as if negating the beauty and wonder of the shaft of light, a voice over the loudspeaker announced in five different languages, that is, five repetitions, “Please respect the silence in this Basilica”. I wondered why it had obviously not occurred to them that the loudest, most disrespectful noise was the booming voice telling everyone to keep quiet. There was no opportunity for quiet contemplation as the announcement was loud and long.

Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio

As I entered Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio, on the same piazza as the Trevi fountain — read: church was all but empty — I was surprised not to see the requisite young priest protecting the sacred spaces. That was, until I sat down and rested my tired feet on the kneeler. All of a sudden he appeared, or more likely, bolted through a hatch in a door that must have extended 20 feet up the left transept. He reprimanded me through the familiar Italian mixture of gestures and words, turned around and raced back through the hatch. A group of elderly women appeared and were gathered around one of the chapels at the back, obediently listening to their guide. Lo and behold, out he came again. The young priest stood right in the middle of the ladies and dealt them a warning not to go inside the chapel, even though they were quietly standing at least two feet from the altar rail, listening to their guide. He must have been safely back behind the door for no more than two or three minutes when an American with a camera came and sat near me. I wanted to tell him not to take photographs as there would be consequences, but this seemed a little too like self surveillance. There must have been either a spy hole in the hatch of the 20 foot door, or a surveillance camera. I couldn’t see a camera anywhere – so I imagined the young priest sitting behind the door, eagerly awaiting the next infringement of his domain.

Michelangelo, Il CristoBasilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva

In the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a major church in the Roman Catholic order, an old priest sat next to a makeshift table selling books on Michelangelo, reading his iphone. He showed complete disinterest in any of the goings on in the Basilica. I watched a group of tourists from India stroke the legs of Michelangelo’s Il Cristo. The smooth erotic surface of the perfect form is of course, just waiting to be stroked, so why not. A group of young Italian school children were being led around, given a talk on each of the Basilica’s attractions. While they were relatively well behaved, by the time they reached the Carafa chapel with Filippino Lippi’s frescoes, they couldn’t contain themselves. One chased another around the altar space and the others followed, and the let out muffled shrieks. The priest did not look up from his iphone.

The floor just outside the Basilica San Pietro

And in the holiest of holy, the Basilica San Pietro, anything goes. There was no attempt to curtail photographs, noise or school children’s scuffles. I wondered if the mise-en-abîme of chapels, and the sheer size of the place, either makes it impossible to police, or more likely, absorbs the sound? Similarly, perhaps the Catholic church reasons that if the sculptures have lasted this long without being damaged by the caresses of the 25,000 tourists that move through there in a day, then there’s no need to prohibit access. That said, Church logic isn’t that easily distilled: Michelangelo’s Pietà is now behind an elaborate glass structure and railing — of the genre that keeps visitors going anywhere near the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. So while school children can chase each other around the altar adorned with Lippi frescoes and a Bellini sculpture can prop up weary tourists, there’s no going near a Pinturicchio fresco in Santa Maria del Popolo, to give an other example. In the end, like most rules and regulations of the Roman Catholic Church, I imagine there’s no sustainable argument to support the surveyance of tourists in its most hallowed spaces.

Ceiling Decorations in the Sistine Chapel

Today, I had a dream came true. I visited the Sistine Chapel. I have been in Rome three times over the years and for one reason or another, I have never managed to get inside the Vatican Museum complex. I spent a full eight hours in the complex today, and so when I say I visited the Sistine Chapel, I did that and much more.

Over the years, a number of people have boasted that they saw the Sistine Chapel empty, that is, without the hoards of tourists with whom I shared my experience. Of course, at the time, I had no idea what that meant, but today, I realized, it means very little. At least, I can’t honestly say that my experience of the ceiling was impoverished by the wall to wall tourists who filled the space at any one time. Because, always the eye is turned upwards. No one was ever in my way, no one’s head was too big to see over, no one pushed in front of or past me to get a closer look. The only place to look was up, and the line of sight was clear at all times.

I would even say that the multitudes had little effect on how moved I was to be in the presence of a work of art that is so famous that it is everyone’s dream come true to stand before it. I was overwhelmed along with everyone else. As I walked from the contemporary art galleries I could feel the anticipation and then, as I stepped inside and saw The Consignment of the Keys to St Peter with its incredible, luminescent colour, I began to cry. It wasn’t the reputation of the ceiling that overwhelmed me, but to be in the presence of a piece of art that is so masterful and so powerful, a piece of art that is so difficult to conceive of when we look at it, and impossible to imagine how it was executed, that’s overwhelming. I managed to grab one of the few seats along the right side of the chapel and as I sat there wiping away the tears, a woman who could barely speak English next to me, who had travelled from the Phillipines, said “it’s a lot to take in.” I thought she was trying to comfort me, acknowledging the sheer profundity of the experience. But she then said, “it’s like being in IKEA.” I couldn't quite bring myself to ask for an explanation. I didn't want to be robbed of my emotional revelations, and to admit I was crying from exhaustion after a two hour pilgrimage through the preceding galleries to reach the Sistine Chapel.If the crowds didn't alter my experience, it was because I refused to let them.

The most reproduced panel of the ceiling is, of course, the central panel depicting The Creation of Adam. There’s a reason for that: namely that it is stunning. That and the next panel, Separation of Land from Water, in which God bursts out of the sky looking as though he is heading straight for us, are so perfect. The adjacent panel that sees the Original Sin and the Expulsion from Paradise is also wonderful, but the perspective and placement in the foreground make the first two like magic. Because the ceiling was painted backwards, from the far wall and beginning with the end of the story in the flood, by the time Michelangelo reached the beginning of the story in the centre of the chapel, he had mastered the complex art of perspectival foreshortening. God and Adam are perfect because they are simpler, more grand, more graceful, more balanced in their perspectival rendition. They float through the air.

Zechariah

I also loved the prophets from the old testament and the sibyls from Classical tradition, because in them we see how brilliant is Michelangelo’s understanding of the perspectival illusionism in the story of Genesis on the ceiling proper. The twelve figures are oversized and overdressed in their gorgeous robes. They sit between the ceiling and the walls of the church, between heaven and earth, literally. I kept wanting to reach out and touch those robes. 20 meters up in the sky, and I felt as though I could touch them because of the mastery of perspectival illusion. Their telling of the coming of Christ – the reason behind Michelangelo’s selection of the twelve figures — makes them humble and beautiful. Not to mention the freshness and clarity of their robes, the delicacy of their facial expressions, the contortions of their bodies.

Delphic Sybil

So while the stories are impressive and no doubt Michelangelo offers new and exciting interpretations of the Book of Genesis, what makes the Sistine Chapel a masterpiece is the perspective of images that cohere the long vaulted ceiling, and yet, echo the architectural design of panel separation. That, like bodies falling out of the sky, robes billowing thanks to the movement of bodies that nevertheless sit still, and the delicate features of faces painted five hundred years ago, 20 meters above my head, still seems like an impossible task to me. 

Caravaggio, Calling of St Matthew, 1599

Caravaggio, The Calling of St Matthew, 1599

I have loved this painting for a lifetime. I have seen it over and over and over again in reproduction. I have referred to it, I have been mesmerized by it, and when I was writing A Culture of Light, a postcard of Caravaggio’s The Calling of St Matthew was pinned above my desk. I have always thought of The Calling of St Matthew as the most convincing evidence that the cinematic existed centuries before the cinema was invented. For me, this painting is exquisite.

Today I visited the Contarelli Chapel – fifth on the left as every guidebook repeats – in the San Luigi dei Francesi, just off the Piazza Navona. I stood before The Calling of St Matthew for the first time. The work is so astonishing that I felt my heart begin to race. Really. Four hundred years later and the painting is as clear, and as unfathomable as it must have been in Caravaggio’s time. It is a painting that fills its viewer with joy, with hope, as though the light that sweeps without hestiation through the scene catches us in its magic.

The Electrical Lights ruin the painting

Let me begin with the narrative.  According to the scriptures, when Christ calls Matthew, the dishonest tax collector, to be his disciple, Matthew already knows Christ. And so opens the first ambiguity of the Caravaggio’s depiction. Who is Matthew? Is it the bearded man pointing his left hand? And if so, who does the finger point to? Is it to himself? Is it to the man on his right with the glasses? Or is it to the young boy, head hung in shame or humility (whatever the case may be) because he recognizes Christ. I have never admitted that I was unsure of which of the three figures represented the man who would become St Matthew. Critics and commentators usually assume it’s the bearded man pointing his finger because he most resembles the man in the other two paintings in San Luigi dei Francesi’s St Matthew cycle: The Inspiration of St Matthew and The Martyrdom of St Matthew. But after today, I am not so sure. I know, without a doubt, there are a number of possible interpretations. Today, caught up in the vigor of this breathtaking painting, I became more convinced than ever, Caravaggio wanted it to be ambiguous. There’s no telling which one is Matthew. It could be any one of the three of them.

Of course, the most extraordinary element of The Calling of St Matthew is the light. More distressing than the rail that stops visitors entering the chapel and thus demands that we contemplate The Calling of St Matthew and The Martyrdom of St Matthew from an angle, is the harsh electrical lighting that becomes activated by a euro in the light box. I assume that in Caravaggio’s day, the chapel, thus the paintings, would have been lit by candles. And while candlelight would not soften the ambiguity of St Matthew’s identity in the painting, it would accentuate and enrich the dramatic lighting effects. The beam of light that falls through the window above and to the right of the scene is what enables the “calling”. The calling is Matthew’s summons from earthly to divine. The beam of light energizes the painting, it is everything. The beam of light ignites the drama as it then moves effortlessly from Christ’s perfect face, to his hand, across the face of the beautiful young boy caught in a moment of absolute wonder, to the hand of the bearded man. The sweep of light, its spilling into the room and across the relay of hand gestures must be one of the great moments of the seventeenth century. If ever we had any doubt that the cinema had predecessors in painting, this beam of light puts them to rest.

Caravaggio, The inspiration of St Matthew, c. 1600

The painting is three dimensional in its composition: while it’s difficult to see because of the crosswise perspective from behind the rail, once we turn to the The Inspiration of St Matthew and we see the dimensionality of the stool on which Matthew rests his foot, a stool that is about to fall out of the frame, and we then turn back to The Calling of St Matthew, everything changes. When we turn back, we see that no only has Caravaggio pushed the figures to the front of the picture plane, but that we are invited to fall into the space, as though into a tavern at the turn of the 17^th century. Whether we agree with the critics who call this realism, or those who want it to be naturalism, whichever way we go, there’s going to be indecision and even more ambiguity. I stood there this afternoon, seduced into this vivacious space that is nevertheless silenced in disbelief and reverence for Christ, I realized that Caravaggio entices us into an extraordinary, illusory and impossible world that has only tangential reference to reality. The figures, all of them, including Christ, look like they could have been pulled off the winding cobblestone streets that surround the Church. But Caravaggio paints them into a world that is in motion, in transition between earthly vice and the perfection of spiritual transcendence. And for an hour or so today, I felt, temporarily, as though I too was being called to a life of piety and humility. Such is the power of The Calling of St Matthew.