ABSTRACT
Medievalism has been perceived as mere aestheticism : Walter Pater and Heine saw the Middle Ages as a store of poetic inspiration; but the latter also saw that medieval culture was essentially religious, a “passion-flower which had blossomed from the blood of Christ”, and that consequently medievalism were engaged in a religious quest. The eighteenth century was rationalist and anti-Catholic, classicist and anti-Gothic, and, typically, James Thomson regarded Gothic buildings as “heavy monuments of shame”. But in 1733 Thomas Gent wrote that Kirkstall Abbey “produc’d in an inward Veneration” and was “enough to strike the most harden’d Heart, into the softest and most serious Reflexion”. Medieval churches lead one to heaven and are “Types of the spiritual Church”. The revival would lead to serious error if it was viewed and advertised as the “emblem and advocate of a past ceremonial or an extinct nationalism”.
