Versailles was built in a context that could, from a certain point of view, be called a crossroads in history.
The starting point of the Middle Ages was the invasion of the barbarians into the Roman Empire and their mixing with the decadent Europeans of that territory. Plunged into a kind of chaotic situation, these peoples began to feel the influence of the Church. And so, from the mixture of decadence and savagery, things moved towards a combined effect that was very different from these two factors.
It is clear, therefore, that a third factor came into play: the infinitely precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, the influence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
From barbarism to the pinnacle of civilization
Events progressed in the direction of emerging from decadence and decay, as well as from barbarism, and building a new order of things under the constructive influence that guided and drove it: the rise of Catholicism.
Thus, an entirely positive influence, the predominance of the Catholic Church, was felt over entirely negative natural situations. The Church was able, by means of the correspondence to grace that these children of decay and barbarism ended up giving, to build a new order: from barbarism they headed towards the pinnacle of civilization.
From the barbarian invasions to the Middle Ages the distance travelled was vast, but there were yet further heights to be reached
In this sense, if we compare society after the barbarian invasions with the Middle Ages of the enchanting and magnificent Sainte-Chapelle, St. Louis’ Louvre or his Palais de Justice, we see that the distance travelled was colossal. However, despite the fact that customs in St. Louis’ time were no longer barbaric – we could say they even reached a quintessence – they had much that could be completed and improved upon. They had the capacity to attain a state of greater splendor; they were, in a word, even more “splendorable”. I do not think this word exists in our Portuguese vocabulary, but it suits our language well.
A mysterious saturation of splendour emerges
This journey from the bottom of the crucible – where decay and barbarism mingled – to the apex, had always followed he direction of culture, good taste, distinguished manners, a polished and refined spirit and the splendour of life. It reached its peak with Louis XIV. He established the peak for himself and for Europe, setting a certain standard.
From then on, a process of decadence began, characterized by a mysterious saturation with splendour, beauty, the solemn and majestic ordering of things: the perpetual presence of grandeur. This saturation became progressively more pronounced with Louis XV and Louis XVI and culminated in a neo-barbarism.
At the end of the Ancien Régime, there was once again a situation in which many decayed elements came into contact or clashed with demagogic elements, which were also, in many of their aspects, re-barbarized. There was another clash, another fusion of the barbaric and the decayed, which, due to the lack of Catholic influence – and much less due to a series of circumstances – ended up resulting in what we have today.
This is a very summary view of history, making it easier to situate Louis XIV, Versailles and their world: “Louis XIVism” represented something of the Middle Ages that had reached its apex.
Palace or moral compendium?
Before we analyse Versailles, let us see what role a castle or palace plays in the psychological life of a people.
The purpose of a royal castle or palace is to house the sovereign – he needs to live somewhere – with the splendour that corresponds to his high rank. There he receives visitors and ambassadors with their credentials, offers banquets, gives receptions, and has his private apartments for his personal life. Everything befits the supreme rank he occupies, in line with the etymology of the word majesty: stat maius, the state that is greatest, maximum, more than all the others.
But this is the interior aspect of the palace. We need to ask what importance its exterior has for the life of a people. The man who is the king, the number one of the nation, lives there. So we ask what the number one dwelling is like. What is the number one splendour? What is the number one security? What is number one beauty? What is the number one charm of the place where the number one man lives? So the castle or royal palace – perhaps it is worth making a cautious distinction between a castle and a palace – is a kind of standard for the best in the realm of housing.
A palace or castle ought to be like a moral compendium: the highest dimensions of a monarch’s spirit are expressed in its construction
Philosophers of art claim – and though I am not entirely convinced they are right, I feel strongly inclined to think the same – that the number one art is neither painting, nor music, nor sculpture, but architecture, in which all the others are encompassed. Because it is architectonic and brings together all the elements of beauty, it is a kind of supreme sculpture or supreme painting, a maximum picture, a maximum realization of a maximum ideal of beauty and a number one state of spirit.
In this sense, a palace is a compendium of morals, because it must teach the highest degree of virtue, which is the duty of the supreme authority of a country. So what is the king’s strength like? How is his wisdom, his patience or his impatience? What is his charm, his gravity and seriousness, his anger like? The highest dimensions of the human spirit, attributed to the monarch, are expressed in the physiognomy of his palace.
The king’s house must represent the ultimate in beauty
The ancients had the idea that whenever a large building was built, it had to be a grand building. A building had no right to be large without being a grand building at the same time.
The large boxes of Fifth Avenue1 still had some decorative aspects, but with the advent of “miserabilism” came the plain concrete buildings, which signify decadence, a step towards the return to barbarism. Exposed concrete is a tomb seen from within. It does not constitute a human environment and has no merit whatsoever!
On one occasion, Monsignor Gastão Liberal Pinto, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, with whom I had very close dealings for some time, showed me a blueprint or a photograph of an establishment that had been built, if I am not mistaken, behind the Luz Garden. It was destined for a charity which, although he did not say so out of humility, I suspect was entirely maintained by his family who were very wealthy. It distributed milk and provided other help to young children – a good and laudable Catholic work.
He said to me:
“Look here, I will show you the layout of the dairy.”
“Very well!”
I noticed that there was a great deal of concern for decoration. They wanted to make a beautiful building. I expressed some surprise, saying:
“A beautiful building like this for a charity enterprise, in such a proletarian neighbourhood?”
“But this is the problem. If the building is big, it has to be beautiful!”
I realized that this was a vestige of tradition, and rightly so: nothing has the right to attract a lot of attention without at the same time being good for the soul.
You do not, for example, have the right to erect an ugly tower. Nor even a tower that is not beautiful and, as far as possible, a work of art, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the possibilities of the place.
Whence the idea that the king’s house should be of the utmost beauty.
Louis XIV and absolutism
At the end of the Middle Ages, when certain virtualites were in disarray, a situation of chaos arose in which the great feudal lords, generally princes of the reigning house who ruled lands with a certain degree of autonomy from the king, tended to revolt against the monarchs. Not to proclaim an aristocratic republic, but to reduce royal power.
The kings would resist. And the nobles – many of them at the pinnacle of nobility – culpably rose up against those to whom they owed allegiance, vassalage and obedience. They had no choice but to rely on the people, on the most powerful class of the common people, which was the bourgeoisie, in order to resist and not be overwhelmed.
Louis XIV, in particular, dreaded the return to feudalism, and this is because he wrongly identified feudalism with chaos and therefore wanted absolutism with order.
Louis XIV’s mistake was to confuse absolutism with order. He saw the problem like this: if these nobles do not need the king to live in their fiefdoms, if they have their own rights that the monarch cannot eliminate and they pass them on by heredity to their children, then there is no power that can compel them to obedience. Therefore, in order to force them into obedience without completely destroying them, this power must be Herculean. We are either heading for a Herculean monarchy or a rickety one.
In other words, since the unity of the nation comes from the monarch’s strength, its unum must be very strong or it disintegrates. Therefore, the king must be Herculean, or in this case, absolute: he can do anything, he is omnipotent.
Louis XIV: a precursor of the French Revolution?
Louis XIV wanted to establish order in the kingdom by a means in which order did not exist: a nobility poisoned by the principles of a decadent Christendom. From a nobility in this condition, every manner of evil was bound to emerge, because Christ the King was not present there in the totality of His power, leading the nobleman to love his duty of loyalty, his submission to the king, as had so many feudal lords in the past. Without a moral bond, power resolves nothing.
To maintain order under these conditions, power becomes tyrannical. And by virtue of being tyrannical, it ends up exploding. This explains the French Revolution.
Because of this, Louis XIV, who in some ways symbolizes the opposite of the French Revolution and whom it hated with all its might, was himself a forerunner of that Revolution.
The Sun King lacked a sacral conception of life
He was the Catholic King – he committed great sins and also had very good sides to his reign – but he did not have a sacral conception of life; he was not able to see temporal problems within a spiritual framework. In any case, he should have favoured the elements of the Church that reacted against errors, in order to be able, based on the Church, to change that situation.
In the memoirs he left his son, he acknowledges that he did not intervene in the religious quarrels of his time because he was completely ignorant of religious issues. Therefore, he was not fit to be king.
Despite the errors of absolutism and his lack of sacred vision, Louis XIV brought art, culture and civilization to unprecedented peaks
However, with Louis XIV, art, culture and civilization reached their peak. He sought to build the splendorous palace of the absolute king, who represents the nation’s glory, its luxury, its splendour, and its power. He is the monarch who shines like the sun, and in his presence the stars disappear; he is not the feudal king who illuminates the stars but does not devour them.
It is said that Louis XIV was short. A great, Herculean or Leonine stature would have greatly enhanced him. However, with this short stature, he imposed respect, knowing how to dominate with such majesty that, as reported byhis enthusiasts – or, according to others, his sycophants; in a regime of absolute monarchy, these things are confused – they began to call him Apollo, the sun god. He was le roi Apolon, the sun among men: le roi soleil. And Versailles, the palace-soleil, the sun palace, completely sunlit, magnificent and brilliant. It is inside this palace that the figure of Louis XIV shines.
Splendid and smiling majesty
Everything at Versailles was decorated with extraordinary, indescribable good taste, conveying an idea of proportion that was slightly smiling and festive, but grand and powerful.
The formula of Louis XIV and the Ancien Régime when it came to public power was exactly that: powerful and majestic, but smiling – not in the sense of laughing, but smiling – or better, smiling and charmant.
Take the park at Versailles, for example.
There are staircases, water, lawns and groves of trees. From these four elements, arranged on a surface that is not entirely flat, but wisely graduated, stems its beauty.
Seeing the designs that are repeated in various flowerbeds, and how each flowerbed is a replica of the other, shows the love of symmetry that was one of the hallmarks of the spirit, system of government and art of Louis XIV’s time.
The formula for the Sun King and the “Ancien Régime” was powerful and majestic, but smiling; the same goes for Versailles and its gardens
Then, forming an agreeable contrast, we suddenly find a pleasant grove of trees, which takes the edge off the excessive cultivation, artificiality and design of the landscape. It is the noble and gentle spontaneity of an ultra-civilized and blessed nature.
These trees are to ordinary trees as a well-educated person is to an ordinary person. They are aristocratic trees; you would think that they might have had a little tea or been spritzed with champagne.
And let us not think that this park was meant to be empty. On the contrary, it was open to everyone. To enter, all you had to do was rent a sword from any man outside the palace, tie it to your belt and enter, even if you were not a nobleman. You could spend the afternoon there.
The park itself reflects a splendid, smiling majesty. There is an indisputable majesty, with something triumphant about it. Because of this, it smiles, sure of its triumph, but it smiles with grandeur! ◊
Taken from a Conference.
São Paulo, 14/4/1989
Notes
1 One of the busiest and most famous avenues in Manhattan, New York.