Date of Award
1983
Document Type
Research Paper
Abstract
Chartres Cathedral is a work of art which- although it is already almost eight hundred years old- is very important to us. From the cathedral we can learn much about the world and our perception of it. We, in the modern world, have a very one-sided view of the world- we view it from a very scientific, materialistic standpoint. In Chartres we find a very compelling corrective to our sight. Chartres is a physical expression of the medieval mind- a mind which saw the reality of both reason and faith in their lives. The medieval man- who created works such as Chartres Cathedral- was not plagued by a one- sided view of the world. These men had finally come to the point where faith and reason were harmoniously blended and they saw the world from this more complete vantage point. This mentality, though, was the solution to a very great conflict which arose in the late Twelfth and early Thirteenth Centuries. It was at this time that the rational system of Aristotle threatened the faith of the early Church. This conflict of seemingly irreconcilable opposites- faith and reason- caused the scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth Century to develop the “scholastic solution” - a system which reconciled and balanced faith and reason into a coherent whole.
Recommended Citation
Raab-Peters, D. (1983). Chartes: An Artistic Representation of the Scholastic Solution. Retrieved from https://poetcommons.whittier.edu/scholars/170