September 26, 2006
Guilty pleasure: Great Monasteries of Europe
&On Sunday afternoon I had the pleasure of visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral. I often spend time in churches, even though the joy I derive from them is, with my distanced, entirely secular appreciation of what they represent, limited to the aesthetic register. Perhaps "guilty," used in the title of this entry, isn't the right word to describe this pleasure. Either way, the visit caused me to spend time with Great Monasteries of Europe (Abbeville Press, 2004), a massive, lavishly illustrated volume that I recently came across. I admire the rigor of any disciplined life, including that of the men and women who cloister themsleves within monasteries' walls, but, given the sumptuous visual evidence in this book, it is plain that "monastic" does not necessarily equate to "ascetic." If you come across this book it's well worth flipping through; it's better than any shelter magazine. Below is the upper church, seen from the east, of San Francesco in Assisi, Italy.
