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The Cathedral is the Bishop's seat, where the Bishop is enthroned.
Where the Bishop sits, the Cathedral rises.
So a spine is bent. So a spine straightens.
So it follows.
The Cathedral was once a migratory thing, its mobility the mobility of the Bishops' body, of his bones and cushioning break-fluids. The Cathedral was action, not architecture. It was the act of sitting, not the seat. This is no longer true.
What is true is that the Cathedral is in the city; that it is what makes the city the city. (We might imagine a Cathedral built on the precise line that marks the urban boundary. It would have no material thickness, but would nevertheless be always expanding, always expanding).
What is true is that the Cathedral may be Simple or it may be Patriarchal. These are ascending degrees of dignity, an ecclesiastical seating plan.
What is true is that the Cathedral is disintegrating.
Such things have their reasons.
Where the Bishop sits, the Cathedral rises.
So a spine is bent. So a spine straightens.
So it follows.
It begins with the windows. Thousands of tiny panes shudder in their lead surrounds then fall to their floor, smashing and scattering. The nave looks full of dead dragonflies. The glassless windows look like cartoons. Light (it passage into the Cathedral for so long filtered, for so long tempered and spangled with dyes) floods in, and everything is suddenly all sky and stone, all blue and blonde and grey. The roof is next. First its plaster and paintwork falls downwards in dandruff-y clumps, then the ribbed vaulting buckles and collapses like an imploded chest. For a moment, it seems like the walls - with their buttresses, their beetle-y exoskeleton - will remain standing, but then they too begin to falter. The nave crumbles into nothingness, then the crossing, the transept, the choir, the presbytery, and then finally the sanctuary. Dust puffs up from winded prayer cushions. The font bobs with rubble.
Such things have their reasons.
For a long as anybody can remember, the city's boys had gathered in the Cathedral grounds. Sometimes they would kick at the building's stonework, or would pitch pebbles at its windows. Sometimes they would sing so loud that they believed (in their perfumed drunkenness) that the whole edifice would come tumbling down. They weren't sure why they did this, but it had something to do with being boys, and with becoming men. Still, the Cathedral stood, until it didn't. It was elevated, until it became a plan.
Where the Bishop sits, the Cathedral rises.
So a spine is bent. So a spine straightens.
So it follows. |
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