Although we have next to nothing left to us of any letters or documents that Margaret Rope herself may have written, her brother Harry does mention her now and again in his diaries.
Thus, in 1923, Harry drops two tantalising, brief sentences about her: “She had been studying … the philosophy of …. St Thomas (Aquinas) hard in odd moments this last year or more, and has gained a diploma of the (sic) London University for an essay on art and scholasticism. This kindled her love of contemplation.”
But, intriguing as that reference is, that’s it; Harry never mentions the matter again.

So far, researchers have looked in vain for this essay. It’s made harder to find it as it’s not even quite clear which university Harry is actually referring to: the University of London’s records don’t mention Marga.
So, research continues into that.

Art et Scolastique

What we do know however that is the subject of Marga’s essay, ‘art and scholasticism’, was in the air. In 1920 the young Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain had published his Art et Scolastique (in English: Art & Scholasticism).
Its effect on artists of faith was profound, influencing writers such as T.S. Eliot, Allen Tate, Thomas Merton, and Mary Flannery O’Connor and it particularly had an effect on the sculptor Eric Gill.
Maritain went on to be highly regarded, and even helped frame the UN Declaration on Human Rights in 1944.

Did Marga know of Art et Scolastique? It’s highly likely. Even if her French wasn’t totally up to it, abstracts in English would have been brought out; and in fact a full English translation was quickly completed (finally published in 1923).

Scholasticism and modern art

What Maritain had cleverly done was come up with a theory of fine-art which, among other things, synthesised neo-Scholasticism (a revival of the work of the great medieval philosopher St Thomas Aquinas) and modern artistic movements. Maritain wrote in his book about connections between Aristotle and the contemporary composer Stravinsky, and between Aquinas and the ‘Decadent’ poet Baudelaire… and more. Exciting stuff!
Marga could not have failed to notice such a major work which touched on – in fact, was – the very subject of her diploma.

A radiant presence

Secondly however, it’s probable Marga also would have positively wanted to engage with Maritain’s thought anyway. It was quite radical for a Catholic philosopher to embrace the sensuality of modern art, so thus it touched directly on the approach she herself was taking in her stained-glass art.
It would have been especially important to Marga at this point in time: a moment when she was thinking deeply about the connection between her faith and her work.

It’s clearly impossible to explain Art et Scolastique in a post such as the one you are reading, but one idea from it would surely have resonated with Marga – the ‘radiance of form’.
Maritain’s metaphysics claim that, in fine art, the artwork actually communicates with the viewer or artist, and vice versa. In other words, we are ‘really’ making contact with Creation, through using our sense organs intuitively… leading eventually to “a curious feeling of intellectual fullness” (which we are powerless to express). Maritain calls this “an Intuition of Being”.

All this has so many echoes of the way that Marga’s art works – she seems to strive for what you might call the paradox of mystic apprehension mixed with sensuous Reality – that Maritain’s words must have struck home forcibly to her.

All one has to do is contemplate her West Window (1910) to grasp the connection… and then, ten years after she completed that work, out comes a book seeming to understand her approach!
(One coincidence is that Maritain and she shared the same zeitgeist, being exactly the same age).

1923

In 1923, soon after she wrote her essay, Marga entered an ‘enclosed’ convent in order to be a Catholic nun. No doubt, as Harry said, she must have been seeking the contemplative life.
However – and possibly to her great dismay – she was persuaded by the abbess to continue working in stained-glass, because it raised income for the convent.

What matters about this turn of events is not just that her career continues (still producing great work), but it gives impetus to an effort to try to trace the effect – through the windows she completes during this time – which her extra study of theology & religious philosophy while in the convent has on her work.
And a reading of Maritain may well contribute to that…

(Thanks to RH for a deal of the research behind this article)
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Footnotes
# Even more attention may be paid to Maritain over the next twelve months. The year 2024 is the 750th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, and many conferences and papers will mark the jubilee. It’s expected that the work of Maritain, a ‘neo-Thomist’, will feature heavily.
A translation of Art et Scolastique is available online – click here to see it.

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