This book is not meant to be a definitive exploration of the whole
of the two churches in any case. The attempt would be absurd. But
the book is not meant, either, to be an intense exploration of
"certain aspects" of the two churches. It is meant rather to be an
extended essay about the connected differences between the two
churches, to use "aspects" as touchstones for comparison. It is
meant to be a comparison of two total styles. These are not
architectural styles, although there is a marked and significant
difference between English and Italian ecclesiastical architecture
in the thirteenth century. The nonarchitectural style of the
thirteenth-century Italian church might in fact be called sustained
Romanesque, or perhaps sustained Burgundian. Comparing England (or
Britain) with Italy in order to expose more fully one or both is
not a new idea. Historians, like Tacitus and Collingwood, have made
the comparison, and so have poets, like Browning and, with superb
intellectuality, Clough. This is, at least locally, where angels
feared to tread. The famous Venetian Anonymous wrote from the other
side in his Relation (of about 1500), and condensed for us his
comparison in the observation that unlike the Italians the English
felt no real love, only lust. The spring bough and the
melon-flower, Collingwood's city and field-the long continuity of
the difference is startlingly apparent. Explaining the continuity
(and perhaps there is no more difficult sort of historical
explanation-its difficulty is painful to the mind) is not the job
that this book sets itself. But it would be dull and dishonest to
ignore the fact that the continuity exists. All that this book has
to say may be no more than that the thirteenthcentury Italian
church was in fact, as Browning warned, a melon-flower. The book
may be only a gloss on amore. The symbol is more inclusive, more
evocative, less guilty of excluding the essential but undefined,
than detailed description can be. Melon-flower and amore, however,
fortunately for the purpose of this book, say very little about the
intricate, connected detail of administrative history.
Collingwood's (after Tacitus's) city against field presses less
deeply but says more. The general difference between the styles of
the English and Italian churches has a great deal to do, and very
directly, with the fact that the inhabitants of Italy were
continually city-dwellers and the inhabitants of Britain were
essentially not. Although this book is about both England and
Italy, it approaches them differently. The thirteenth-century
Italian church is, particularly in English and French, practically
unknown. Before it can be explained or analyzed, it must be
recreated, formed again in detail. The job is in part really
archaeological. The outline of past existence must be uncovered.
This is not at all true of the thirteenth-century English church.
It has been well explored. This disparity in past observation
forces my book to talk much more of Italy than of England; but, if
it is a book about one church rather than the other, it is a book
about England. England is meant to be seen, for a change, against
what it was not. In this sort of profile it has a different look.
England may no longer seem a country in the frozen North,
incapable, in the distance, of responding fully to Lateran
enthusiasm. Its full response to ecclesiastical government may seem
clearly connected with its, of course relatively, full response to
secular government.
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