The Bodily Temple 
PLAN OP<X 
OF POITIERS, FRANt 
-AN IVORYCARVING) 
OP THR TWELFTH 
CENTURY 
FIGURE OF CHRIST 
FROM THE- EAST— 
WINDOW, POITIERS 
FLAN OF CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS 
A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL THE SYMBOL 
OF THE BODY OF JDSU5 CHRi$T~- 
for the architectural designer than that of 
seeking to discover essential identity between 
things apparently unrelated,— between a 
work of architecture and the body of man, 
for example. The manner in which the 
tower of a Gothic cathedral ascends from 
its simple and strong base to terminate in 
a spire of delicate tracery is not unlike 
that in which the arm grows from shoulder 
to finger-tips. The towers and turrets of 
many a French chateau are attached to it in 
the same organic way that the head and limbs 
join the trunk. There are campaniles in 
walled Italian towns which seem to stand, 
like sentinels, looking out on mountain and 
campagna; nor is their strangely human 
aspect wholly imaginary. Giotto’s matchless 
tower, for example, conforms very closely 
to the proportions of the figure. A Doric 
column, also, is reminiscent of a man, for the 
excellent reason that the ratio between mass 
and height are much the same in both. 
Such correspondences, though scarcely 
accidental, were, on the other hand, not pre¬ 
meditated. At certain periods of the world’s 
history, however,—periods of mystical en¬ 
lightenment, when the soul was near the sur¬ 
face of life,—men have been wont to use the 
human figure, the soul’s temple, as a sort of 
archetype for sacred edifices. The colossi, 
with calm, implacable faces, which flank the 
entrance to Egyptian temples; the great 
bronze Buddha of Japan, with its dreaming 
eyes; the little-known colossal figures of 
India,—all these belong hardly less to the 
domain of architecture than to sculpture. 
In France, during the mystic centuries of 
the Middle Ages, a Gothic cathedral became, 
at the hands of the secret masonic guilds, 
a glorified symbol of the body of man,— 
the crucified body of Christ. To practical 
minded students of architectural history, 
familiar with the slow evolution of a Gothic 
cathedral from a Roman basilica, such an 
idea may seem to be only the maunder- 
ings of a mystical imagination, entitled to no 
more consideration than the familiar fallacy 
that the vaulted interior of a Gothic church 
was an attempt to imitate the green aisles 
of a forest. 11 should be remembered, 
194 
