"I Am the Door" Portals of Salvation and Status

If we could travel back in time and walk through a premodern city, we would likely find the sensory experience unusual. The ambient smells were often rank compared with those of our modern cities, while the now normal clamor of machines and electronic devices was blissfully absent. Today, we must rely on textual sources to help bring these experiential aspects to life. By contrast, it is far easier to conceive of what a premodern city looked like, because of the historic districts that survive in cities throughout Europe: many churches, palaces, and houses have been preserved over the centuries and look very much like they originally did. However, this does not mean that we look at these cities in the same way that people of premodernity did. Here again, both written and visual sources of the time can help us piece together what people paid attention to when they passed through urban spaces — and it becomes clear that their perceptions were often quite different from ours. Francesco Bocchi's Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, for instance, which first appeared in 1591, provides an extensive and popular description of the city of Florence. Although it was presented as a travel guide for foreign visitors, it can also be seen as part of the genre of laudatory descriptions of cities that allowed urban citizens to share their pride in their city's noteworthy sights.

Let us spend a moment in sixteenth-century Florence, with Bocchi as our guide. We cannot help but notice the careful attention Bocchi pays, on his various city tours, to the doors of buildings. He presents the "skillfully executed doors" of a certain palazzo as witness to the "exquisite inventiveness" of the architect. Looking at another palazzo, he observes that "the portal is of noble appearance." And of a third he notes that "the very beautiful portal on the façade is made with rich and magnificent ornamentation." Bocchi also devotes attention to the less ornate private homes of ordinary citizens. At times he points to their "beautiful doors"; elsewhere he remarks that a particular "door is designed with much grace." Church doors always merit special attention: the two bronze doors by Donatello in the sacristy of San Lorenzo "are very highly prized by all artists." And of the doors on the right side of the nave at San Lorenzo, attributed to Michelangelo, he writes, "In the simplicity of the parts one recognizes such an elegant and refined understanding that all other work, no matter how exquisite, is surpassed." Yet the most extravagant praise of all is reserved for the famous bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery, designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti (Figure 2). According to Bocchi, they are "executed with such unique and uncommon workmanship that they are regarded as miraculous rather than merely outstanding. Truly, if these two doors by Ghiberti were visible only on occasion, and not at all times, as is the case, there is no doubt that they would rightly be counted among the most valuable wonders of the world."

Bocchi's close attention to doors is a productive but by no means unusual example. Indeed, doors at that time were not simply functional objects, and they carried far more meanings than we associate with them today. Even the doors of average private houses were more than just mechanisms for entering a building. They frequently served as sites for legal proceedings, as backdrops for political ceremonies, and as indicators of social status and honor. Thus the cultural historian cannot focus solely on the door's material appearance: it is also crucial to uncover the roles that doors played within the symbolic world of premodernity and within what Jacques Le Goff has called the premodern "spatialization of thought."

In this context, the religious symbolism of doors, especially church doors, springs to mind. It is no exaggeration to say that the church door was considered the archetype of all doors in premodern culture, and it frequently became the showplace for a range of religious rituals and ceremonies. In other words, each church door, far from being merely an imposing and interchangeable backdrop, was believed to embody a specific religious meaning.

This metaphysical dimension was closely connected to the contemporary understanding of salvation, a context in which doors and gates played an essential role. Indeed, premodern people were convinced that the decision between every soul's salvation or damnation would someday be played out in front of very real, though not earthly, doorways: the entrances to heaven and hell. Remember those magnificent doors to the Florence Baptistery, which Bocchi called a "wonder of the world" and which the great Michelangelo himself saw — literally — as an anticipation of the "gates of paradise." This designation has lived on in the vernacular, although most of the Baptistery's present-day visitors are probably not familiar with the depth of this religious background. For us, the religious experience of these doors has become a purely aesthetic one.

In premodernity, by contrast, most people firmly believed that heaven and paradise would be reached through gateways or doorways; they also pondered endlessly over who would be permitted to enter, and what they needed to do to ensure their admittance. Over the centuries, responses to this question — a key issue in Christian theology — divided the various currents within Christianity, particularly after the Reformation, but there was consensus on the idea of a gateway to heaven, which was confirmed by the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, it was Jesus himself who, in a famous verse, described heaven's gate as "the strait gate," where "there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." He advised his disciples, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." Thus, the celestial door was open only to the righteous, as can also be seen in several other New Testament passages. One of these (Matt 16:13–20) is the source of the belief that the Apostle Peter kept watch over this door and that Christ himself entrusted Peter with the key.

Yet the exact location of this entrance to heaven was a source of much disagreement. The influential doctor of the church Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) claimed that there must be two doorways, one to the east and one to the west. This issue was further complicated because the Bible does not state definitively whether the porta caeli should be envisioned as a gate or a door. The Latin term porta was ambiguous in any case; in premodern times, it could designate a city gate as well as a house door. Indeed, in Christian iconography we find both options: the entrance to heaven sometimes appears as an imposing city gate, while...