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“High above crowded and undulating skylines, from Italy to Scandinavia, from Portugal to Poland, the towers and spires of our massive cathedrals beckon to the world from the ancient hearts of Europe’s cities. The most famous are listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In the popular conscience – our ‘museum of the imagination,’ to quote Andre Malraux – Chartres, Reims, or Strasbourg immediately spring to mind at any mention of medieval Western Europe, just as the mere reference to Egypt conjures up visions of the Pyramids. Such monuments so universally recognizable as to form landmarks with which to chart the history of civilizations.”

(Anne Prache – Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Paris [Sorbonne]; “Cathedrals of Europe” Cornell University Press, 2000, from the introduction)

It would be difficult to find a more universal icon of Western Spirituality than the Cathedral, without resorting to the cross directly. Ms. Prache goes on to quote Emile Mále as describing “the cathedral as the ‘mirror of the world’ – of Western Christendom and the Europe of the Middle Ages…” (originally – E. Mále, L’Art religieux du XIII siecle en France. 1st ed. 1898)

Spirituality however, is ultimately a personal experience and not a ‘corporate’ one. Just as I cannot be spiritual for you, nor you for me, so a church (the building or the group of worshippers) cannot make us as individuals more enlightened. The church – in whatever form – is simply a representation, a tool to aid us in our souls. And so in these paintings cathedrals are representations of the perils and triumphs that can beset our souls, the Light and Darkness that each must face in order to seek after Holiness.