Love and passion rise cathedrals

Editorial Staff

In recent months I have had the opportunity to admire the beauty of Rome with a guided tour. While I was admiring, with amazement and wonder, the greatness of the main Christian basilicas, the guide froze me with this statement, «These stones are soaked in the sweat and blood of those who erected them». So I tried to imagine the times in which they were built and asked myself if a work of art justifies the sacrifice of human lives.

B.F.

I really hope that the guide did not think of “sacrifice” in the bloody sense, but in the sense of dedication and passion. Certainly, there have been many poor people who have worked, sweated and perhaps even suffered for the construction of religious buildings. In any case, in ancient times the building sites of the churches were an opportunity for the poorest to work and for artists to be ingenious. It is said that someone asked a stonemason, who worked passionately on a capital destined for the highest frame of a Romanesque church, why he put so much attention to detail since no one would ever see it up close. The answer was apparently this: «I am pleased that I can please God who will see it all for himself». In some cases, the sacrifice explains some monuments, but I hope it was the occasion for a little love. Sometimes of great love. Perhaps for this reason we are no longer able to do such great and gratuitous things: for lack of love and passion. If you want to enjoy understanding that world and that way a little better, you could read Ildefonso Falcones’ novel – which also became a film – “Cathedral of the Sea”.