The Corruption of Architecture: Origin stories and Original Sin in Jean-Francois Senault’s 1644 ‘L’Homme Criminel’
(2024) Annual meeting of RATS (Renaissance Architecture Theory Scholars)
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- Authors
Sik, Daniel 
- Abstract
- Stories concerning the origin of architecture are rich and varied in their intended purpose. Scholarly interest in such origin stories is generally focused around 18th century theorists such as Laugier, who is believed to mark the point where these narratives shift from bolstering renaissance progressivism to incorporating enlightenment primitivism. There exists, however, notable primary sources predating Laugier which make similar assertions, but exist outside the genre of architectural treatises. This paper explores one such theological text, titled ‘L'Homme criminel,’ written by the French Oratorian Jean-Francois Senault and published in 1644. In the ninth discourse, titled “Que les Bastimens sont les ouvrages de la nécessité, du plaisir ou de la vanité”. Senault argues that building’s necessity was produced by the corruption of nature. Consequently, the elevation of building to architecture is simply an advancement in corruption. Within this lies a similar assertion which was more famously disseminated by Laugier a century later: that from the point of its origin, architecture underwent a continued process of corruption. This similarity is remarkable due to the fact that the 18th century proclivity for this assertion was commonly attributed to advancements in enlightenment anthropology, as well as the apex of the french ‘Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.’ However, Senaults origin myth precedes both these intellectual developments- suggesting that the concern over a corrupted architecture may be strongly influenced by the theological developments of the 17th century concerning the nature of man- to which clerics like Senault and Laugier would have been equally attuned.
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Sik, D. (2024). The Corruption of Architecture: Origin stories and Original Sin in Jean-Francois Senault’s 1644 ‘L’Homme Criminel’. Annual meeting of RATS (Renaissance Architecture Theory Scholars).