Reprinted in Benediktinische Monatschrift zur Pflege religiösen und geistigen Lebens, Erzabtei Beuron, 3. Band 1921, pp. 363-372

September 15 [1920] was the fiftieth anniversary of the day on which the chapel of San Maur was consecrated to the service of God. “Tuesday September 5 will be a memorable day in the history of the Danube valley ” , wrote the annalist, Father Boniface Wolff, in the monastery yearbook . «That day the chapel of Saint Maur, almost completely decorated, was consecrated with festive ritual”. We believe it will be interesting for readers to hear the words of the artist who erected the votive chapel. In 1920, on the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the now ninety-year- old master dedicated the following short treatise “to the beloved and reverend father the archabbot Raphael Walzer“, in memory of the completion of the chapel, which took place in 1870. The author has made some changes and clarifications during the preparation of the text. We contributed the annotations.

The first [geometry] is that which serves mundane, material, purposes: measuring the surface of the earth involves a division among proprietors, [as well as] knowledge of lands and seas. Humanity has therefore divided into proprietors of recognized or disputed possessions.

Second is mechanical geometry, the division of time and forces, from the pocket watch to the technology of great machines, which is based on the order and arrangement of numbers and their powesr. But the power of numbers is mediated by the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth!

Third is the geometry of the quantities in God’s creation, manifested in the geometry of the beauty, order and regularity of forms, chiefly in the mutual harmony the surfaces, in their numbers, angles and quantities: “God created each thing according to measure, number and weight” (Wis. 11, 21).

Fourth is the application of these things to art as a language of signs that speaks to men as the Word of God. It is the genuinely aesthetic and ethical geometry, whose sense of beauty and truth also leads towards the Good; and in its highest meaning, towards holiness : [a geometry] defined in relation to God Himself , as as type and means of offering the supreme acknowledgement to Him as Divine Service, even at the altar – Liturgy!

The highest result of this geometry should first be to represent and describe humanity in its two genders, male and female. At this point one may wonder whether the human mind will ever be able to attain such a goal^{, [p 364]}

For, the whole of Christian and Jewish science is incapable of solving the riddle according to which “God created man in his image and likeness (Gen. 1,26 and 5,1-2). Neither of their theologies have scratched the surface of this question; and the reason is that neither of them had a fixed point, a foothold from to begin the project of its solution: what was lacking was Number.[1]

Thus it is that God created everything according to number, measure, and weight; above all, he created man in his likeness. But we are utterly unable to conceive of this likeness unless it has number measure, image and form. But which ones?

Now the Gospel teaches us that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14). But the Incarnate Word is therefore Christ, in his sacred humanity. Consequently, our humanity would have its normative form in Christ, just as all femininity would manifest itself in his most holy Mother, the Virgin.  If we could only succeed in knowing the numbers of these normative forms, or at least to know the beginnings of a number as a form.

But how are we to determine the numbers of these normative forms, if the great ocean of human figures that surrounds us no longer possesses it and cannot demonstrate it? Only Adam and Eve, prototypes of the original image in God’s heart, had these normative numbers and measures, but they lwere lost with original sin; and the humanity descended from them, disfigured by sin, can no longer demonstrate in its innumerable variations the primordial normative measure.  All are abnormal: similar, certainly, but deviant, no longer bearing the Divine Norm. Even their ideas are different! There [in Eden] were the forms of God and the Mother of God; here, inevitably, the form of human beings: [2]  merely similar, but not the Norm!

     Today we know, however, that the art if the ancient Egyptians and the [art] we call classical, [that is,] of the Greeks who were heirs of the Egyptians, demonstrably knew the canon of the norm of the human couple. The works are its embodiment. ^[p.365]

The artistic images that define the classical ideal are based on it; images that still fascinate us today as something inimitable, representations of the highest species of human form , something divine, superhuman, in which all of humanity is included.

What, then, was the magic key that enabled the pre-Christian peoples of antiquity to create such ideal figurative art and  architecture ─ an art which, in the case of the Egyptians, has managed to preserve the power of its formal principles and thought for more than three thousand years, remaining powerful, harmonious and compliant with the rule until the end, as it was in the beginning. This was because it was raised and governed by the ideas of true knowledge of God, and from them created its own laws, or rather, distilled them from the depths of the laws of nature. This, the foundation, is the reason it possessed eternity within itself and expressed it in spite of the idolatry that later eras imposed on it.

What was the magic key that enabled the Greeks to depict their twelve gods in the most finely accentuated images , derived from a normative image known to them from which their laws and the entire recognizable range of physiognomic traits were also distilled? [3]  They transmitted to humanity a portentous art, in which human forms reached the ideal and still today they are by unanimous recognition forms of imperishable nobility and prestige. So what and which was this magic key?

It was the canon of the normative human form in two genders, granted so that they would reveal themselves to be the ideal image of the  God-Man, Christ, the Word made flesh, and of his Virgin mother Mary, norm of femininity. The canon was the light given to art so that it would rise higher than realism; a saving guide for those those who tread unexplored paths: a particular light given by God, revealed to the children of men in order to cultivate an art worthy of God.

     This places before us the questions: where does this canon come from? What origin does it have? What are the shapes and numbers by which it manifests itself? The first historical reference is in a passage from Vitruvius: [namely,] that the Greeks had a canon and that Polycletus, a contemporary of Phidias and Myrone (all three students of Ageladas), had formulated the numerical rules of this canon in writing . Vitruvius reports three laws, of which only two are useful, the third incomprehensible. He also informs us, as already noted elsewhere, that the Greeks built their temples according to the measure of the human being, or rather according to his criterion of dividing him. But having lost the canon, this point remains indecipherable. ^[p.366]

Father Odilo Wolff, in his book Tempelmasse, restored this understanding and demonstrated its correctness, applying and testing the canonical principle of construction to the temples of the Greeks, as well as others.[4]

Since it is also demonstrable that the Egyptians already had this knowledge, even since ancient times, the question thus  more [forcefully] arises: when and where did it all begin?  Where would the first fortunates have been who were able to solve this riddle?

     In the Sacred Scriptures we read that the Creator showed all His works to Adam, the crown of creation; and Adam was to give each one a name and meaning, and that they would be circumscribed vy this meaning and significance (cf. Gen. 2, 19-20). When God asked him, “And what do you say about yourself? What do you name yourself?”, Adam answered Him. And this answer presupposes that the Creator was recognizable by Him in form and image; that is, that Adam recognized measure and number in the Divine Form . Thus [Adam] answered,“I am your image and your likeness.”

     And he had deduced and answered correctly, because he had seen the Three in One, as in the equilateral triangle. In order to give this answer Adam must necessarily have been introduced to the divine wisdom hidden in and underlying the Creation. According to Father Pörtzgen’s essay , The Heart of Jesus in the Universal Design (Das Herz Jesu im Weltplan), Adam was endowed with such a high and deep knowledge of the Wisdom of God that, in comparison with that knowledge, the science of the world’s most learned men would be as insignificant as a laborer’s day-wages  compared with a wealthy [person’s] many possessions.[5]

      Therefore Adam must already have been acquainted with all the depths of the secrets of God’s aesthetic geometry - the laws of measure, number and weight - in order to understand the working of God in the works of creation, and thus to give them names and in so doing describe them. ^[p.367]

     [Adam] was thus also acquainted with the nature of God as triune, as Trinity, whose symbols are the circle, the square and the equilateral triangle; therefore his answer to the Creator, “I will be your image and likeness”, was immediate and necessary. Thus is Adam!

     And therefore from [Adam] derives the knowledge of the canon of the norm of the human couple, not a hazardous gamble, but the most natural thing. Thus the canon comes into force and effect with Adam; and when the exegetes say that Seth or Enoch were the first to prepare a house for the worship of God (see J.F vonAllioli), that is, to devise and execute the construction of a temple, then these were the students of Adam; and the oldest and first motives of the building science of temples were also those that we find  in the primordial art of the Egyptians, in the [ancient] works of a period when there was still true knowledge of God:  they stand before our eyes in the forms they have retained . These are the pillars, embodying  the strongest eternal power and endurance, the rows of pillars and columns with horizontal stone covering, made possible by the local natural conditions.

These elements, simple and logical, make eternal laws concrete, which will always have the validity and purpose of teaching truth for men, guiding them towards the eternal and making them even more sensitive to the principles of authority, eternity and truth. The art of the temple builders demonstrated these principles through their works. To the same category belong the enormous representations of the canon with figures of priests (angels) on pillars, called “The Colossi of Memnon”, which express the eternal authority of God: a dense group of angels with outstretched wings, ^[p.368] standing in adoration of the Almighty. Everything about them conveys more meaning, energy and inspiration than a thousand or more Gothic spires ever could.

The sursum corda (of the Gothic), desires first the timor Domini principium sapientiae (Prov.1,7) (of the Romanesque), i.e. an immense faith, then [flowing] from it discerning love ! Spires alone point correctly but remain mute; every growth and all striving upwards, every burning candle, every plant says this more clearly and lives; but they are also mute to us, they are without soul and speech. Angelic forms, however, in the service of the sacred art, but only those built according to measure and number, that represent sacred thoughts and stimulate feelings - these are, as reasoning beings of God, the first of creation, delivered to man as beneficent and destined to give him their example, while all other mute phenomena, because they are without life, tell us nothing. And if they also lack the essence (the dimensions) of monumentality, which, however, can find its expression in the smallest means, then religious art will be able to fulfill its first task, to represent beauty of order (as Bossuetboasted of Egyptian art), in clarity, certainty and evenness of motifs - everything from the pious mind that is thought, felt, measured (and this the first condition), then it will still be able to fulfill its task.

    In any case, monumentality is achieved only through a constant contact with eternal and pure measures, the manifestation of which depends on the eternal divine laws of the sacred numbers. These are found close to Divine Unity (The One) itself. They are the closest to God and precisely because of this proximity they are considered sacred. These are the numbers that lead us to the discovery of the human normative ideal. The fundamental form of the eternal Word made flesh is given by the three measures of the quintuple key, with the root of 12 (diameter) as the keynote and its factors, the root of 4 and the root of 3 (3x4=12) - see the figure of the fifth key (Quintenschlüssel) and the fifth step

However, to find the normative form of the woman, the root of 5, i.e. the diagonal of the double square, is essential . The female number, the root of 5, i.e. the golden section, is the only one capable of making the difference between the second sex and the image of man; without the root of 5 it is impossible to find a connection and to pass from the figure of the man to that of the woman: in other words, [it is impossible] to construct the image of the woman.

      Furthemore, these are also the five regular bodies, which carry in themselves all the dimensions to serve the sacred aesthetic geometry. Their names, in the order in which they fit into the sphere, are: ^[p.369]  First in the cavity between the cube and its sphere is the pentagonal dodecahedron; because standing outside the cube, called: the first, the outer golden section body: it encloses the cube, which is the king of all five, their head and the bearer of all, which in its square surface carries the root of 1 as a side and the root of 2 as a diagonal.[6]

     The diagonal intersection of the cube is the center for all five bodies and in general for all activity which can develop in the cube. These two numbers as unity, as one in itself and inseparably connected, depicts the concept of the two sexes. They have life only when united; divided, they both lose sense and meaning: the shape of the square, ^[p.370] as the root of 1 it serves only itself;, but without the root of 2 it remains bare and empty. And the root of 2 without the 1 says nothing - is completely meaningless, meaningless. The octahedron appears as the third figure in two aspects (vertex and side).  The fourth is the tetrahedron (simply in itself or enclosed in a hexagon).  

The fifth is the icosahedron, the second (inner) solid of the golden section, which with twenty faces of equilateral triangles for a surface and in twelve regular pyramids with five faces, harmoniously combines the numbers 3 and 5, which are of themselves completely contradictory. What all this [is supposed to] mean and express is the deepest question for human understanding [to ponder]!

     These are the five regular solids. As long as the world has existed, the human spirit has never been able to find a sixth. Thus, they contain within themselves all the wisdom of God’s aesthetic geometry.

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And finally, from this treasure of regular proportions derive the normative images of the normative human couple in Christ, the God-man and Virgin Mother of her God, whose all-surpassing beauty, the Crown of Creation, once appeared on earth [in Christ].

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     It is solely from these sources that there flowed the stream of sublime and uplifting religious art. From these sources art draws respect, dignity and power; and, only through them can it become a language for  the divine and sacred simplicity. Ancient classical art idemonstrates this.

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      Admittedly these are all only tools, not truly art itself. They are what in music [corresponds to] the chord, with its four [numbers], and the key signature with its eight [numbers]: that, is the diatonic [scale] (the chromatic scale, [although] apparently richer, is actually weaker and, as secular music, is not is accepted by the Church). They are what, together with rhythm, contain within themselves the whole language of art and music. And this will always show that the higher and more sacred the ideas, the motives, and the thoughts, the more deeply they are rooted in the truth - the more they are an expression and representation of the truth. So the more simple these - and only these - primordial measures and primordial symbols are, the closer to the “One”, will be the means and tools which contained within their octaves beneath will form rich scales of expression. ^[p.371]

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In this regard, Winckelmann speaks the great high Word: “ Beauty is exalted in simplicity”.

However, to get to know these tools exactly, and to present them to [both] eye and feeling, i.e. to learn the language of the art, - that is best accomplished when combined with practice. One thing tastes the other [7]

But these paths can only be trodden and discovered only by those with inborn talent [or] genius; [for] it is a divine Vocation.

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