6. A Parting of Ways

(E.H.Gombrich/The Story of Art)

-Rome and Byzantium, fifth to thirteenth century

-現在も目にするいわゆる「教会」の形が登場。たくさんの人を収容できるための議事堂／集会所型になったという解説に、なるほど。確かに教会はホールだ。

-教会の中に置くものとして、教義に触れるので彫像はNG。神はギリシア美術で作られていたゼウス像のようには表せない、表してはいけない。

-絵画がOKかどうかは意見が分かれる。ここでローマ帝国の西側、ラテン世界のグレゴリウス１世が「信者の大多数は字を（つまり聖書を）読めない」と絵画利用を支持。ローマ教皇がこの立場を取ったことは美術史にとってとてつもなく重要な意味を持つ。

-一方、ローマ帝国の東側（首都ビザンティウム／コンスタンティノープル）はグレゴリウス１世らローマ教皇と対立。内部で偶像破壊派（iconoclasts）と、逆に絵画を（単なる文字の代わりではなく）神聖なものとするイコン崇敬派が生まれる。

-東側で発展したビザンティン美術。一見かけ離れて見えてもギリシア美術の技法も確かに生きている。教義に沿った伝統的な表現を重んじつつも、古代オリエント美術の粋を汲んだ筆で東方教会の内装を飾った。

-世界史用語をいろいろ調べ直しながら書いていますがお気づきの点があればぜひ教えてください…

The interior of the temple was usually only a small shrine for the statue of the god. [...]The church, on the other hand, had to find room for the whole congregation that assembled for service when the priest read Mass at the high altar, or delivered his sermon. Thus it came about that churches were not modeled on pagan temples, but on the type of large assembly halls [...] under the name of ‘basilicas’, which means roughly ‘royal halls’.

On one thing nearly all early Christians were agreed: there must be no statues in the House of God.

Pope Gregory the Great, who lived at the end of the sixth century AD, [...] reminded the people who were against all paintings that many members of the Church could neither read nor write, and that, for the purpose of teaching them, [...] ‘Painting can do for the illiterate what writings does for those who can read.’

If the picture looks rather primitive to us, it must be because the artist wanted it to be simple. The Egyptian ideas about the importance of clarity in the representation of all objects had returned with great force because of the stress which the Church laid on clarity. But the forms which the artists used in this new attempt were [...] the developed forms of Greek painting.