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sanction of Scriptural interpretation and the sacraments, allegory and symbolism became accepted principles of spiritual verity, sources of political argument, and modes of transcendental truth. They penetrated the Liturgy, charging every sentence and ceremonial act with saving significance and power; and as plastic influences they imparted form and matter to religious art and poetry, where they had indeed been potent from the beginning.

In the early Church the office of the Mass, the ordination of priests, and the dedication of churches were not charged with the elaborate symbolism carried by these ceremonies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the Liturgy, or speaking more specifically, the Mass, had become symbolical from the introit to the last benediction; and Gothic sculpture and glass painting, which were its visible illustration, had been impressed with corresponding allegory. Mediaeval liturgic lore is summed up by Guilelmus Durandus in his Rationale divinorum officiorum, which was composed in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and contains much that is mirrored in the art of the French cathedrals. It is 76