Byzantine Cross designed and fabricated by Dom Wilfrid Bayne
In the 1940’s, Portsmouth Priory produced a publication entitled the Portsmouth Association Bulletin. In addition to news notes and various items of current interest, it included some developed theological studies from the monastic community and others associated with it. We published recently one of its articles by the artist, E. Charlton Fortune, who later taught in the School. Dom Wilfrid Bayne (1893-1974), one of the earliest members of the monastic community at Portsmouth, joining not long after its creation by Leonard Sargent, remained active in the cultivation of monastic life at Portsmouth in a variety of ways. Notably, his expertise in heraldry was world renown, and he created not only the coats of arms of the monastery and School, but also for a number of other monasteries and institutions, including Harvard University. The Byzantine-style crucifix he fabricated can now be seen in the St. Basil Chapel in our church. He also wrote extensive articles on such themes as theology, aesthetics, and pedagogy. Echoing and expanding upon our series on the Abbey’s artists, we reprint excerpts from an article on the Beautiful that he published in the Portsmouth Association Bulletin (1942). It is a challenging but rewarding read, offering a philosophical grounding to understand the place of beauty in religious and liturgical life.

Detail of cross by Wilfrid Bayne in St. Basil Chapel…Considered from the point of view of the mind contemplating, beauty can be, and has in fact been, defined as: “That, the very apprehension of which pleases“. This definition which is a product of Greek philosophic speculation, is frankly subjective and psychological. It is balanced by a second, also Hellenic in origin, which, not satisfied with a purely subjective analysis, reaches forth to the objective world of being, existing outside the mind, to find there the cause of that subjective pleasure which the mind contemplating experiences in the presence of some beautiful object. The greatest of the Greek thinkers found the ontological basis of aesthetic experience in that order, or design, which God, “the first Author of beauty“, has impressed upon the works of his hands. Hence, the second great contribution of Greek speculation to the science of aesthetics, the Platonic definition, “Splendor ordinis“, the splendor of order, or design. This splendor of order, or form, which came into created being “when God first dawned on chaos“, is the ontological and objective basis of that psychological, and subjective delight in which the aesthetic experience consists. This delight is disinterested, that is, not necessarily connected with the desire for possession.
Dom Luke Childs with Dom Wilfrid BayneFrom this it is clear that the religious significance of the beautiful has two aspects, the one subjective the other objective. Under the former the Divine vestiges are considered in light of subjective religious experience, the soul as it were seeking and finding in created beauty a reflection of Him Who is essential loveliness, catching, as it were, at the hem of the garment, “surrounded with variety”, in which God shrouds, and at the same time partly reveals, His Majesty. Under the latter aspect, on the other hand, these same Divine vestiges are looked at in the light of their ontological meaning, the very impress of God’s ordering splendor upon material formlessness, being regarded as a sort of consecrating mystery whereby created things are made sacred, and rendered peculiarly adaptable to those liturgical uses whereby due honor is rendered to the Deity…

…The ancient Jews… developed a magnificent liturgy which if purer than the liturgies of the pagan cults surrounding (them) was scarcely less lavish in the employment of beauty. One has only to read the descriptions of the Temple and its ritual, as set down in the Sacred Scriptures, to realize this. The Christian Church is the liturgical legatee of this ancient ritual, of which her mysteries are the fulfillment. Legatee she is also of all that is noblest in pagan forms. That the Church in the process of developing her liturgy has “borrowed” heavily from the ceremonial of the ancient mystery religions can hardly be substantiated, although at one period in the development of the “higher criticism” it was the fashion to suggest that she had done scarcely anything else…
St. Louis Abbey Coat of Arms
(design by Dom Wilfrid Bayne)…In summing up it may be useful to point out the ontological connection between beauty on the one hand and truth and goodness on the other. These three are called in philosophy “transcendentals”, because they transcend the limitations of the particular and are of universal application. In the light of the highest metaphysics their very outlines become less sharply defined and the three appear merely as different aspects of one and the same thing, – being. All being is true, good and beautiful. In fact truth, goodness and beauty are but the one thing, being looked at from different angles. The intellect apprehends being as true, the will and appetites tend toward it as good. But what of beauty? The case of beauty is not so simply analysed, for it stands between the other two and partakes of the nature of both.

The intellect is the faculty by which the beautiful is apprehended, yet it is not apprehended under exactly the same aspect as the true, for beauty is truth under the aspect of the good. Beauty is the good of the mind, something in which the mind in a manner analogous to the appetitive faculty comes to rest and experiences delight in the contemplation of truth… Truths heretofore seen in isolation take on a deeper and richer significance, viewed as part of an harmonious whole. The soul has seen the “beautifulness of truth”, it has come into the presence of wisdom.

The same is true in the sphere of ethics. The fulfillment of the moral law is difficult enough for fallen nature, but when the precepts and prohibitions are presented piece-meal, the problem is made more difficult. As in the case of religious truths, there is a point at which the hidden balance and harmony between isolated moral principles reveal themselves in a synthetic vision of holiness, and the enamoured soul receives a new impulse towards the attainment of perfection, because now the moral law has revealed to it, not as a code of legislation, but as a portrait of the Just One. Henceforth the hunger and thirst after righteousness becomes a hunger and thirst after union with Him Whose moral beauty ravishes the angels. The soul has glimpsed the “beauty of holiness,” it has tasted Wisdom.

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