Deum Videre: I am an art historian, therefore I believe

The Shoulder Wound of Jesus

2011-12-26T02:09:00.000+01:00

It is related in the annals of Clairvaux that St. Bernard asked Our Lord which was His greatest unrecorded suffering and Our Lord answered: "I had on My Shoulder, while I bore My Cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous Wound, which was more painful than the others and which is not recorded by men. Honor this Wound with thy devotion and I will grant thee whatsoever thou dost ask through Its virtue and merit. And in regard to all those who shall venerate this Wound, I will remit to them all their venial sins and will no longer remember their mortal sins."

Prayer to the Shoulder Wound of Jesus

O Loving Jesus, meek Lamb of God, I a miserable sinner, salute and worship the most Sacred Wound of Thy Shoulder on which Thou didst bear Thy heavy Cross, which so tore Thy Flesh and laid bare Thy Bones as to inflict on Thee an anguish greater than any other Wound of Thy Most Blessed Body. I adore Thee, O Jesus most sorrowful; I praise and glorify Thee and give Thee thanks for this most sacred and painful Wound, beseeching Thee by that exceeding pain and by the crushing burden of Thy heavy Cross to be merciful to me, a sinner, to forgive me all my mortal and venial sins, and to lead me on towards Heaven along the Way of Thy Cross. Amen.

This Roman Catholic prayer is variously attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux or to St. Gertrude or St. Mechtilde. In the twelfth century Pope Eugenius III approved of the promises with regards to this prayer. The modern version of the prayer bears the imprimatur of Bishop Thomas D. Bevan

From 'The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ' - the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich

2011-12-23T00:01:00.000+01:00

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Veil of Veronica.

WHILE the procession was passing through a long street, an incident took place which made a strong impression upon Simon. Numbers of respectable persons were hurrying towards the Temple, of whom many got out of the way when they saw Jesus, from a Pharisaical fear of defilement, while others, on the contrary, stopped and expressed pity for his sufferings. But when the procession had advanced about two hundred steps from the spot where Simon began to assist our Lord in carrying his cross, the door of a beautiful house on the left opened, and a woman of majestic appearance, holding a young girl by the hand,
came out, and walked up to the very head of the procession. Seraphia was the name of the brave woman who thus dared to confront the enraged multitude; she was the wife of Sirach, one of the councillors belonging to the Temple, and was afterwards known by the name of Veronica, which name was given from the words vera icon (true portrait), to commemorate her brave conduct on this day.

Seraphia had prepared some excellent aromatic wine, which she piously intended to present to our Lord to refresh him on his dolorous way to Calvary. She had been standing in the street for some time, and at last went back into the house to wait. She was, when I first saw her, enveloped in a long veil, and holding a little girl of nine years of age, whom she had adopted, by the hand; a large veil was likewise hanging on her arm, and the little girl endeavoured to hide the jar of wine when the procession approached. Those who were marching at the head of the procession tried to push. her back; but she made her way through the
mob, the soldiers, and the archers, reached Jesus, fell on her knees before him, and presented the veil, saying at the same time, ‘Permit me to wipe the face of my Lord.’ Jesus took the veil in his left hand, wiped his bleeding face, and returned it with thanks. Seraphia kissed it, and put it under her cloak. The girl then timidly offered the wine, but the brutal soldiers would not allow Jesus to drink it. The suddenness of this courageous act of Seraphia had surprised the guards, and caused a momentary although unintentional halt, of which she had taken advantage to present the veil to her Divine Master. Both the Pharisees and the guards were greatly exasperated, not only by the sudden halt, but much more by the public testimony
of veneration which was thus paid to Jesus, and they revenged themselves by striking and abusing him, while Seraphia returned in haste to her house.

No sooner did she reach her room than she placed the woollen veil on a table, and fell almost senseless on her knees. A friend who entered the room a short time after, found her thus kneeling, with the child weeping by her side, and saw, to his astonishment, the bloody countenance of our Lord imprinted upon the veil, a perfect likeness, although heartrending and painful to look upon. He roused Seraphia, and pointed to the veil. She again knelt down before it, and exclaimed through her tears, ‘Now I shall indeed leave all with a happy heart, for my Lord has given me a remembrance of himself.’ The texture of this veil was a species
of very fine wool; it was three times the length of its width, and was generally worn on the shoulders. It was customary to present these veils to persons who were in affliction, or overfatigued, or ill, that they might wipe their faces with them, and it was done in order to express sympathy or compassion. Veronica kept this veil until her death, and hung it at the head of her bed; it was then given to the Blessed Virgin, who left It to the Apostles, and they afterwards passed it on to the Church.

Seraphia and John the Baptist were cousins, her father and Zacharias being brothers. When Joachim and Anna brought the Blessed Virgin, who was then only four years old, up to Jerusalem, to place her among the virgins in the Temple, they lodged in the house of Zacharias, which was situated near the fish-market. Seraphia was at least five years older than the Blessed Virgin, was present at her marriage with St. Joseph, and was likewise related to the aged Simeon, who prophesied when the Child Jesus was put into his arms. She was brought up with his sons, both of whom, as well as Seraphia, he imbued with his ardent desire of seeing our Lord. When Jesus was twelve years old, and remained teaching in the Temple, Seraphia, who was not then married, sent food for him every day to a little inn, a quarter of a mile from Jerusalem, where he dwelt when he was not in the Temple. Mary went there for two days, when on her way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to offer her Child in the Temple. The two old men who kept this inn were Essenians, and well acquainted with the Holy Family; it contained a kind of foundation for the poor, and Jesus and his disciples often went there for a night’s lodging.

Seraphia married rather late in life; her husband, Sirach, was descended from the chaste Susannah, and was a member of the Sanhedrim. He was at first greatly opposed to our Lord, and his wife suffered much on account of her attachment to Jesus, and to the holy women, but Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus brought him to a better state of feeling, and he allowed Seraphia to follow our Lord. When Jesus was unjustly accused in the court of Caiphas, the husband of Seraphia joined with Joseph and Nicodemus in attempts to obtain the liberation of our Lord, and all three resigned their seats in the Council.

Seraphia was about fifty at the time of the triumphant procession of our Lord when he entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and I then saw her take off her veil and spread it on the ground for him to walk upon. It was this same veil, which she presented to Jesus, at this his second procession, a procession which outwardly appeared to be far less glorious, but was in fact much more so. This veil obtained for her the name of Veronica, and it is still shown for the veneration of the faithful.

Just some food for thought possibly appropriate for the Feast of St Luke

2011-10-18T22:45:00.002+02:00

It may seem curious to some that many of the wonder-working icons are actually (from an artistic, and even iconographic, point of view) very poorly executed.
But when one remembers that the original icon is not what was allegedly painted by Saint Luke, nor even what is preserved on the Shroud of Turin, but the human being itself, which was made in the image of God; and when one thinks of how imperfect that being is, and yet what great things it is capable of, then the technical imperfection of those images is hardly curious at all. It is just another reminder of the unfinishedness of creation, of God's love for the humble, and of how often the stone that the builders reject becomes the chief cornerstone.

One way of finding meaning in the Shroud of Turin

2011-09-24T13:39:00.000+02:00

Petrus Chrysologus, Sermo CVIII, Patrologia Latina 52, 499-500:

Nonne dicit: Si divinitas ignota est, vel caro sit nota? Videte, videte in me corpus vestrum, membra vestra, vestra viscera, ossa vestra, vestrum sanguinem. Et si quod Dei est timetis, quare vel quod vestrum est non amatis? Si Dominum fugitis, quare non recurritis ad parentem? Sed forte vos Passionis meae, quam fecistis, magnitudo confundit. Nolite timere. Crux haec non meus, sed mortis est aculeus. Clavi isti non mihi infigunt dolorem, sed vestram mihi infigunt altius charitatem. Vulnera haec non educunt gemitus meos, sed magis vos meis visceribus introducunt. Extensio corporis mei vos dilatat in in gremium, non meam crescit in poenam. Sanguis meus non mihi deperit, sed vestrum prorogatur in pretium. Venite ergo, redite et vel sic probate patrem, quem videtis pro malis bona, pro injuriis amorem, pro vulneribus tantis tantam reddere charitatem.

Is it not said: If divinity is unknown, perhaps the flesh is known? (Meaning: Even if you fail to recognize/understand my divinity, acknowledge my humanity.) See, see in me your body, your members, your organs (heart), your bones, your blood. And if you fear what is God's, why do you not love what is yours (human)? If you run from the Lord, why do you not return to the father? (You may run away from me as the Lord, but why not run to me as your father?) But perhaps the enormity of my Passion, caused by you, fills you with shame? Do not be afraid. This cross inflicts a mortal injury, not on me, but on death. These nails do not pierce me with pain, but with even deeper love for you. These wounds are not the cause of groaning, but rather introduce you to my heart. The spread-eagling of my body did not increase my suffering, but opened up my arms to you in shelter. My blood is not lost to me, but preserved as your ransom. Come, then, return to me and recognise your Father as you see him returning good for evil, love for mockery and, for such great wounds, a greater charity.

Sed jam quid obsecret Apostolus audiamus: Obsecro, iniquit, vos, ut exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam vivam.

But now let us hear what the Apostle prays (urges us to do): I beseech thee, unrighteous men, that ye present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

O inauditum Christiani pontificatus officium, quando homo sibi ipse est hostia et sacerdos; quando homo non extrinsecus quod Deo est immolaturus inquirit; quando homo secum, et in se, et quod pro se est, Deo sacrificaturus apportat; quando et eadem manet hostia, idem permanet et sacerdos; quando e hostia mactatur et vivit, sacerdos nescit occidere qui litabit. Mirum sacrificium, ubi corpus sine corpore, sine sanguine sanguis offertur.

Oh, the marvelous priesthood of the Christian, when the man himself is both the offering and the priest; when a man does not need to go beyond himself to seek what he is to immolate to God; when a man with himself and in himself brings the sacrifice he is to offer God for himself; when the victim remains and the priest remains, always one and the same; when, immolated, the victim still lives: the priest who immolates cannot kill. It is an amazing sacrifice in which body without the body, blood without the blood is offered (meaning, body without being slain and blood without being shed).

Obsecro, inquit, vos per misericordiam Dei, ut exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam vivam.

I beseech you by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Fratres, hoc sacrificium Christi descendit ex forma, qui corpus suum pro vita saeculi vitaliter immolavit: et vere corpus suum fecit hostiam vivam quia vivit occisus.

Brethren, this sacrifice follows the pattern of sacrifice of Christ, who gave his body as a living immolation for the life of the world, and who really made his body a living sacrifice, because, though slain, he continues to live.

In tali ergo victima mors expenditur, hostia permanent, vivit hostia, mors punitur.

In such a victim death receives its ransom, but the victim remains alive, the victim lives, death itself is punished.

Hic martyres morte nascuntur, tine inchoant, occisione vivunt, et in coelis lucent, qui in terris putabantur exstincti.

This is why death for the martyrs is actually a birth, and their end a beginning. Their execution is the door to life, and those who were thought to have been blotted out from the earth shine brilliantly in heaven.

From St John Damascene's Homily on the Transfiguration

2011-08-07T17:08:00.001+02:00

Saint John Damascene (c.675-749), monk, theologian, Doctor of the Church
Homily on the Transfiguration ; PG 96, 545

" 'This is my beloved son'... We possess the prophetic message that is utterly reliable" (2Pt 1,17.19)

Today we see the depths of inaccessible light. Today the unending outpouring of the divine radiance shines out before the apostles. Today Jesus Christ reveals himself as Lord of both Old and New Covenants... On Mount Tabor today, Moses, God's lawgiver, leader of the Old Covenant, giver of the Law, stands beside Christ his master as a servant. He recognises the destiny into which he was initiated in times past by its foreshadowings – which is what, in my opinion, the words «to see God from behind» mean (Ex 33,23). Now he sees in all clarity the glory of the godhead «hidden in the shadow of the rock» (Ex 33,22) but «this rock was Christ» (1Cor 10,4), as Paul expressly teaches: God incarnate, the Word and Lord...

Today the leader of the New Covenant, who had proclaimed... Christ to be the Son of God when he said: «You are the Christ, the Son of the living God» (Mt 16,16), sees the head of the Old Covenant standing beside the giver of both the one and the other and saying to him: «Behold He who Is. Behold him of whom I said there would arise a prophet like myself (Ex 3,14; Dt 18,15; Acts 3,22) – like myself in that he is man and leader of the new people but above both me and every other creature in that the two Covenants, both the Old and the New, are disposed by him for my sake and for yours»...

Come, then, let us obey the prophet David! Let us sing praise to our God, to our king; let us sing! «He is king over all the earth» (Ps 47[46],7-8). Let us sing with wisdom, with joy... Sing also the Spirit «who scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God» (1Cor 2,10), seeing in that light of the Father who is the Spirit who enlightens all things, the inaccessible light of the Son of God. Today is manifested what our fleshly eyes cannot see: an earthly body shining with the divine splendor, the glory of the godhead overflowing from a body that is mortal... What is human becomes God's and the divine becomes human.

Rembrandt and the face of Jesus

2011-08-05T20:32:00.005+02:00

The Rembrandt and the face of Jesus exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is sure to be a real treat - for anyone who likes beautiful things. It is equally sure to be a cause of significant vexation - for anyone who likes the truth.
I know I have been vexed while reading the following lines, and believe I am not alone in considering them to be, at best, a complete disregard of the complexity of the matter and, at worst, an insult to the reader's intelligence, education, and expectations.

Depicting the face of Christ had always been a contentious practice in Christian art, as from the beginning the Second Commandment prohibition against idolatry clashed with the image-loving culture of the ancient Roman world. The legality of religious art was a core issue of the Protestant Reformation, and portraying Christ would remain a fraught practice in Rembrandt’s time and beyond. (...) Complicating the representation of Christ was the fact that, since nearly all Christians confess the divinity of Jesus, the very practice of depicting him was seen as conflicting with the Law of Moses, which forbids making images of God.(...) Two early portraits of Jesus, however, were purported to have been produced by the body of Christ itself. These were the Sudarium, or Veil of Veronica, familiar in the Latin West (Roman Catholic) world, and the Mandylion of Edessa--a likeness miraculously imprinted on a cloth that Jesus held to his face, and which he sent to Edessa, in present-day Turkey, to heal its king, Abgar--which was well known in the Byzantine East (Orthodox) world. Like the Shroud of Turin, these portraits were thus considered acheiropoieta (sacred icons made without human hands) and not idols or man-made works of art. These icons became the most authoritative and influential portraits of Jesus and were the models most often used in early Netherlandish painting. (...) Yet the sketches differ dramatically from the acheiropoieta, which, because they supposedly had touched Christ’s body, reference the miracle of incarnation, in which God takes the form of a man. Rembrandt, on the other hand, gave a graphically human character to his Christ by referring to Jesus’s earthly Jewish parentage, his realistic and specific appearance, and his very human emotions. In further contrast to stylized iconic images such as The Holy Face of Laon, in the oil sketches the artist’s hand is evident also in the loose execution, scratches with tools, and unfinished quality.

Now, art history is understandably crippled in its competence, as well as impaired in its methodology and terminology, when dealing with anything that is believed to be of miraculous origin. Inadequacies of that kind can only be expected from a discipline that normally deals with works of humans, and it is likewise forgivable that, under such abnormal conditions, personal convictions will enter the discussion and replace exactness and objectivity.

If you inspect the following passage from Hans Belting's Likeness and Presence - A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Being a 1994 English translation of a 1990 German original entitled Bild und Kunst - Eine Geschchte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, a book that Arthur C. Danto praised as 'a work that anyone interested in art, or in the history of thought about art, should regard as urgent reading', and Robin Cormack applauded as 'the best source to survey the facts of what European Christians put in their churches' and as '[A]n impressively detailed contextual analysis of medieval objects'.), you will find that the author is quite comfortable with passing judgements that are not only unsupported by any scientific evidence, but unsupportable too - in their overstepping the boundaries of exact science:

Legends tell us that icons fell from heaven, not handmade but born of miracles. History gives us a different account.

And if it seems somewhat unclear here what Belting might mean by this 'different account', the 1998 French translation of the book leaves us with no doubt: Ce n'est que dans les legendes que les images miraculeuses tombent du ciel. ('It is only in legends that miraculous images fall from the sky/from heaven.') Il's agit en fait d'ouvres realisees par des peintres et determinees par les circonstances historique, par leur fonctions et par leurs modeles. ('In fact they are works of painters, determined by their historical circumstances, their functions and their models'.)

And to make it certain that this goes for all the images that tradition has identified as being of miraculous origin, Belting includes the Shroud of Turin as well: Only the Shroud of Turin, whose lost original was apparently already venerated in Byzantium as Christ's burial cloth, though it is the imprint of a dead man, comes close to this fictitious imprint of the living Christ. (p. 210 of the English translation)

There is, however, a significant difference between what we encounter in Belting's book and what we read in connection with this exhibition.

Belting may leave us wondering what proof he has to support his convictions, and we may be uncertain whether he thinks his book is a work of an art historian or, rather, a personal account of his coming to terms with the claims of Christianity (and, in particular, those of Roman Catholicism). But his book is unmistakably well researched, his grasp of the subject adequate, and his writing style delightful, while none of that is true for the author of the text we find on the Philadelphia Museum of Art website. Under what we called 'abnormal conditions' of dealing with acheiropoietos images, Belting oversteps his boundaries as an historian. But the author of this sentence:

Depicting the face of Christ had always been a contentious practice in Christian art, as from the beginning the Second Commandment prohibition against idolatry clashed with the image-loving culture of the ancient Roman world (...)

has simply not done his homework.

Depicting the face of Christ? Why would one open a discussion of 'Traditional Images of Jesus' with such an ambiguous expression? How should we understand 'depicting' in this context? As making an accurate portrait, based on real-life experience, a vision, or some acheiropoietos model? Or as an act of artistic imagination?

Depicting the face? As opposed to... depicting His elbows and knees? Was the problem with the actual features of Jesus face, or with painting His physical body in general?
Depicting the face of Christ? Is that Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, or with reference to His preexistence too?
It had always been a contentious practice? Is this true? Who were the contending parties? And was there really always some controversy over such a practice?
From the beginning? From the beginning of what - of Christianity or of Christian art? Or from the beginning of the Mosaic prohibition against idolatrous image-worship?
And is the Second Commandment really relevant for Christian 'depictions' of Jesus face?
And was Christian art really defined in this 'clash' of the Mosaic law with the 'image-loving culture of the ancient Roman world'?
But these may all seem to be only stylistic concerns.
The main point of the text, however (and I may very well have gotten it wrong, because it isn't particularly clear), seems to be that these 'depictions' of 'the face of Christ', based on the acheiropoietos images, represent His divinity, while Rembrandt's novelty was, supposedly, to represent His humanity.

Rembrandt, on the other hand, gave a graphically human character to his Christ by referring to Jesus’s earthly Jewish parentage, his realistic and specific appearance, and his very human emotions.

Again, we could point to problematic details like: 'his realistic and specific appearance' and 'his very human emotions' , but let us keep to the main point of this supposed distinction between representing His divine and His human nature.
At least since the time of the Council of Chalcedon and the famous 'Tome of Leo' it has been crystal clear and universally accepted in Orthodox Christianity that Christ had two natures and that they were inviolably joined together without division or separation. And when icons of Christ were a contentious practice, it was always so because of the fact that it was unclear what exactly was being portrayed. If these icons were trying to portray His divinity, that would be blasphemous, because divinity was not circumscribable and not to be represented by any visual means. And if one was portraying His humanity alone, that would be heretical, because it would go against the decrees of the aforementioned Council.
But the goal of the Early Christian and Byzantine artists was neither to represent His divinity nor to divorce his humanity from it. It was something that the author of this text clearly does not understand.
And the reason why (s)he does not understand it is not because (s)he is working under the 'abnormal conditions' of applying art historical methods, terms and reasoning to acheiropoietos images, but simply because (s)he lacks the basic competence and knowledge necessary to discuss the subject. And I, for one, find it an insult to my expectations as a reader that an institution such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art would put out an article by an incompetent writer and organize and exhibition based on such a poorly researched idea.
The practice of 'depicting Christ' was perhaps most succinctly explained by Maximus the Confessor, who taught that while we can neither see nor represent the essence of God, we did encounter His action. First in creation; then, to a much higher level, in the lives of holy persons; and, finally, to the highest degree, in the incarnate humanity of Jesus Christ. His action, according to this great theologian of the 7th century, soaks through the material realm, as God is not self-sufficiently enclosed, but self-diffusing. He is present - in the lives of the baptized more so than in those of the heathens; and even more so in those who took their baptism seriously and have become saints; and supremely intensified in Jesus Christ. So, what icons of Jesus Christ represented was not His divinity, as in Divine essence, but the way in which the Divine energy was present in His material body. It was a body (and, of course, a face) uniquely soaked through with Divine energy and one that constituted something that Maximus would call a theandric reality. And that was what the icons of Christ represented and that's why the 7th ecumenical council has declared that holy images were in communion with God. They were neither blasphemous representations of His divinity, nor heretical depictions of His humanity alone, but theological statements on His theantropism, a unique instance of God's action soaking through the material realm, as well as of a material body being in full communion with God.
(I have relied heavily in this passage on Archbishop Rowan Williams' presentation entitled, I believe, 'Icons and the practice of prayer', given at the Royal Academy of Arts some time ago.)

Bob Duggan's article on this exhibition makes many of the same vexing mistakes, but was, at least, not published by a respectable institution (but on BigThink):

From the earliest days of Christianity up until Rembrandt’s 17^th century, the idea of portraying Jesus as human reeked of blasphemy. Iconoclasts often violently repressed any attempts to portray Christ as anything less than fully, perfectly divine. Historically “accurate” representations of Jesus, such as the Veil of Veronica, the Mandylion, the Shroud of Turin, and the Lentulus Letter, set the standard rules followed when depicting Jesus during the Byzantine era and beyond. Just a century before Rembrandt’s birth, Dutch Protestants swept the churches clean of unacceptable portrayals of their savior. Into that environment stepped the revolutionary and rebellious Rembrandt.

Again, 'portraying' Christ as human never did and never could reek of blasphemy. The expression missing from Duggan's vocabulary is again - heresy. As we have seen, if an icon tried to represent His humanity alone, it would be separating it from His divinity - which would be heretical.
And iconoclasts certainly did not 'repress any attempts to portray Christ as anything less than fully, perfectly divine'. Portraying His divinity would indeed be blasphemous.

I will not venture now into a serious discussion of how we should understand this theandric reality of Jesus Christ, or how it was represented in art, or how the acheiropoietos images are in communion with God. This is, after all, just a blog. And a poorly visited one to boot. But I was impelled to point out that these people don't have a clue what they're talking about and that the idea that Rembrandt was 'a revolutionary rebel' who first had the courage to represent the humanity of Christ rather than His divinity is utterly preposterous. It is preposterous even from a strictly art historical point of view too, because anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the history of art could easily think of at least a dozen artists who lived well before Rembrandt's time and who had used real-life models for their 'depictions of Christ'. From the point of view of theology of art, though, it isn't just a preposterous idea, but, as I said, an insulting disregard of the complexity of the matter.

Michael Whitby on Evagrius Scholasticus and the Image of Edessa

2011-07-28T01:44:00.004+02:00

Translated Texts for Historians
Volume 33
The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus
translated with an introduction by
Michael Whitby
Liverpool University Press 2000

APPENDIX II THE IMAGE OF EDESSA

Although it is generally accepted that Evagrius is the first author to mention the miraculous image of Christ at Edessa, a radical challenge to this orthodoxy has been mounted by Chrysostomides. (‘Investigation’ xxiv-xxviii; I am indebted to Chrysostomides for the opportunity to consider her arguments in advance of publication.) Chrysostomides argues that the allusion to the icon was introduced into Evagrius’ text in the eighth century, in the context of the iconoclast dispute: Evagrius’ account of the icon was read out at the Ecumenical Council of 787, when a copy of the text presented to the Council by the monk Stephen had this passage erased, although George, abbot of the monastery of Hyacinthus, fortunately happened to possess a complete text. (Mansi, Collectio XIII. 189D-192C.) According to Chrysostomides, Stephen’s text represented the genuine Evagrius whereas that of George had been adapted for its current purpose. Thus, far from being an important example of the development of the cult of icons in the sixth century and of the role of Christianity in defending the empire’s frontiers, the story of the icon would be an instance, equally interesting, of the fabrication of material during the Iconoclast Dispute. There are, however, several problems in Chrysostomides’ analysis.

(1) The closeness of Evagrius’ account to Procopius is overstated. In fact, Evagrius con£ated the Procopian account of events in 540, when Abgar’s letter proved its worth, with the major siege of 544. (Chrysostomides, ‘Investigation’ xxv, does not notice this conflation.) Evagrius transformed the siege mound into the centrepiece of his presentation, a substantial simplification of the more extended narrative in Procopius, but a change which deliberately focused attention on the miraculous nature of its destruction. Procopius recorded two miracles with regard to the 540 attack (Khusro lost his way and sufered a headache: Wars ii.12.32-3), but nothing miraculous about the burning of the mound in 544. Evagrius had a di¡erent story to tell, and so ignored the events of 540 to focus on the greater wonders in 544.

(2) Chrysostomides alleges a gross contradiction in the description of the igniting of the mound: the timbers are said to have been reduced to ashes (p. 175:15-16), but then the Evagrian narrative switches back to the Procopian account in which the mound only gradually catches fire and the defenders have to prevent the Persians from realizing what is happening. ('Investigation’ xxvi) This objection can be evaded by clarifying what was probably happening underneath the mound. The defenders constructed a long tunnel with a sizeable burning chamber at its end, whose roof was supported on timbers to prevent the mound collapsing prematurely, and the inside of the mine was filled with a variety of combustible material: this is clear in Procopius (Wars ii.27.4), but has been obscured in Evagrius’ abbreviation of his source. There were then problems in igniting the material, which Procopius admits (Wars ii.27.7); Evagrius had more exciting information about this development and so departed from Procopius’ story. After the intervention of the icon it was the material introduced by the defenders and those few Persian timbers in the immediate vicinity which were rapidly reduced to ashes; this generated enough heat to initiate the much more gradual process whereby the fire ate its way through the rest of the Persian mound above (where the binding timbers would gradually be burnt away). Experience of burning turves on a garden bonfire would suggest that Evagrius has accurately described two distinct stages, an initial blaze deep inside the mound followed by a slower smouldering process; on the other hand, the process of combining Procopius with his own miraculous story has led to some lack of clarity in exactly what was being burnt, and when.

(3) Evagrius does not cite his source for the story of the icon. Evagrius often, though not invariably, cites his written sources, especially if he is paraphrasing their material or disagrees with their presentation, but he is much more haphazard with regard to oral material. In the very next chapter (iv.28) he does not cite his source for the miracle at Sergiopolis, which secured for that city a comparable delivery from Khusro’s attentions.
So, the lack of a citation for the acheiropoietos story is not ‘contrary to his usual habit’.(Chrysostomides, ‘Investigation’ xxi.) In fact Evagrius does suggest that he has his own information to present about Edessa, since, after referring to Procopius on Abgar’s letter, he states: ‘But I will tell you what happened’ (p. 174:19), a formula which can indicate a change of source. (Cf. iii.18 for an analogous phrase that marks a more explicit departure from his source, Zachariah; also iv.26, p. 172:29-30; iv.28, p. 176:7; iv.29, p. 177:3.)

(4) The miraculous icon is not mentioned by Procopius, nor the Syriac hymn for the inauguration of S. Sophia at Edessa, nor the Syriac Chronicle of Edessa. The silence of Procopius is no problem, especially if the contribution of the icon was added to the story of the heroic resistance some time after the event. The Chronicle of Edessa, also known as the Chronicon ad an. 540 was compiled shortly after the Persian attack of 540 but before the siege of 544, which it naturally does not mention. If the icon was not well known, or perhaps did not even exist, before the siege of 544, this silence is of no relevance. The Syriac inaugural hymn is not decisive, since the precise date of the text is uncertain and its reference to a picture not made by human hands refers to natural patterns in the marble on the church walls. (See Chrysostomides, ‘Investigation’ xxvii; Cameron, ‘Iconoclasm’ 38; Palmer and Rodley, ‘Hymn’ 128-32.)

(5) Neither of the lists of chapter headings at the start of Book iv mentions the icon. This again is not a problem since the briefer set of headings (list 2) covers all the events of iv.24-8 with the entry ‘Concerning the capture of Antioch and what Khusro did to Edessa and the other cities’ (iv.23): it fails to mention the miraculous events at Apamea and Sergiopolis as well as the icon at Edessa. The other set of headings contains four separate entries for Khusro’s campaign of 540 (including the capture of Antioch), the miracle of the Cross at Apamea, the attack on Edessa and the miracle at Sergiopolis (iv.25-8); we do not know the date of composition for either set of headings, although I regard the briefer set as earlier. No firm hypotheses can be built on these headings. Thus, even if the omission of any mention of the Edessa miracle from the longer list is regarded as significant, it could be postulated that this list was drawn up to reflect the text of Evagrius as doctored by the iconoclasts in the eighth century. There is insuficient substance to uphold Chrysostomides’ attack on the integrity of Evagrius’ narrative. Consideration of the broader shape of Evagrius’ exploitation of Procopius in this part of Book iv also supports the conclusion that Evagrius composed this chapter around the miracle of the icon. Evagrius has extracted a very particular range of information from Procopius’ narratives of the Vandal and Gothic wars, essentially information that has a Christian flavour. On turning to the Persian wars of the 540s, Evagrius begins with a general summary of Khusro’s attack in 540, but then focuses on the fates of three cities where miracles demonstrated divine favour for the Romans and thwarted Khusro’s ambitions; he is almost answering the agnostic despair of Procopius over the destruction of Antioch (Wars ii.10.4). In each case Evagrius is able to present significant material that is not in Procopius: his personal experiences at Apamea and the behaviour of Bishop Thomas, the achievement of the icon at Edessa and the vision which defended Sergiopolis. It is precisely because he has extra material that he devotes so much space to these cities; in the case of Edessa he actually ignores those miracles reported by Procopius as proof of the protection afforded by Christ’s letter, because he has a much more dramatic miracle of his own to introduce. Without the acheiropoietos icon, there would be no major miracle in this chapter and the logic of the narrative construction would be undermined. This wider perspective is not considered by Chrysostomides.
Chrysostomides presents her arguments about Evagrius in the context of a study devoted to The Letter of the Three Patriarchs. In this text of the ninth century, the fire miracle associated with the Edessa image (5b) is considerably distorted: while besieging Edessa, Khusro heaped olive wood all round the city which he ignited to create a massive blaze that threatened to engulf the inhabitants; Bishop Eulalius toured the ramparts, carrying the image, and then a miraculous blast of wind drove the flames against the Persians. This example of the malleability of hagiographic stories is interesting in its own right, but does not help to demonstrate that Evagrius’ version was produced in the context of the same theological disputes.

The glagolitic version of the legend of Veronica

2011-07-16T14:17:00.001+02:00

The Western versions of the legend of Veronica often mention that she traveled to Rome and cured the Emperor Tiberius (Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus;November 16, 42 BC – March 16, AD 37) with the precious relic, which at her death she left to Pope St Clement (fl. 96).

The Croatian Glagolitic version offers many interesting details that are not found anywhere else - most specifically that the legendary woman's name was not Veronica, but - Arsenia.

The text translated here is taken from the Žgombić collection, but where the versions significantly differ from one another, it is compared with that from the Petris collection and/or with that from the Croatian Academy's manuscript (IVa 92).

The origins of the text are still unclear, though some believe that they may be Bohemian.

HOW THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST WAS BROUGHT OVER TO ROME AND HOW ANNAS AND CAIAPHAS AND PILATE HAVE DIED

(KAKO BI PRINESENO LICE ISUHRSTOVO V RIM I KAKO POGIBE ANA I KAJAPA I PILAT)

When they were leading our Lord to the crucifixion (the Glagolitic text reads here križno raspetje - which is more emphatic in its two-word form, but since the word 'crucifixion' unites crux and figere I deemed it to be sufficiently accurate and certainly the most communicative translation) then a crowd of people were crying (I am using the plural here because the original reads narod ljudi in Žgombić collection and plk mnogi in Croatian Academy's manuscript - both of both of which emphasize the numerousness of individuals gathered together, rather than viewing them as a unit.), men and women, those that were loving the Lord God with all their hearts and every thing (In Glagolitic manuscripts, tvar can either relate to a thing or to a creature. I chose to translate it with 'thing' here, based on both the dating and the semantic context of the text.) was trembling with the earth and stones were falling apart and the sun and the moon and the stars, all of them were darkened seeing the Lord God being led to death and crucifixion. And there was a woman in Jerusalem and she was a widow by the name of Arsenia. She greatly desired to see the Lord God and she bewailed the Lord's death more than did any other thing in this world. And there was on here head a cloth (The original ubrusac can indicate a headscarf, a towel or a sweat-cloth. To reflect this ambiguity, and restrain myself from any interpretation, I chose to translate it with 'cloth'.) and it was [so] very beautiful that a more beautiful one could not be found in the whole city [of Jerusalem]. And the Lord God looked at that woman and said: "Woman, give me the cloth that you have on your head that I may wipe the sadness and the sweat off my face." And she gave him that cloth of hers. And the Lord God looked at the sky and pressed the cloth to his face and the face of God clung to that cloth. And the Lord God gave her the cloth with his face, and the woman went to her home carrying the face of God and she put it in her clean casket in Jerusalem where she lived.

And there was in Rome an emperor, a pagan, who was lord to all the city of Rome and all the Romans were under him in those times. And he was, the Roman emperor, ill with an evil illness and in his head the illness was. Those were live wasps that lived in his face, in [his] nose and in head and [they] were eating him and were then flying out. And the emperor he was of an ill face and was sending out to all the four corners [of the world] his emissaries [to find out] if anyone could help him with that illness. And many doctors coming, [they] were healing him and no doctor on this earth could heal him. And this emperor heard of a great prophet in Jerusalem by the name of Jesus who could heal him of that illness. And he sent his emissaries to that prophet in Jerusalem and the emissaries came and were asking: 'Where is that great prophet? And other people are saying of him that he is God and are saying that he has made many [of the] sick healthy, could he made our lord healthy too of those wasps that are eating him?' And that woman, Arsenia, heard this and said: 'My dear brothers, the man you are looking for is the Lord God himself, who was born of the virgin Mary. Him, my brothers, Pilate the duke has, with his judges, sentenced to death. Therefore, dear brothers, I have his blessed face; if your lord will believe in that face of God, he will be healed of those wasps and of that evil illness.' And those emissaries said: 'Come, sister, with us! Our lord will gladly believe in that face, if he can be healed.' And then that woman took them to her home and opened that casket where the face of God was. And then that casket shone seven times more [brightly] than the sun of the world. And those emissaries then fell to their knees and bowed to the face of God. And, taking the face of God, blessed Arsenia went with them to Rome to the emperor. And the servants sent one among them ahead to Rome to the emperor. And when he came [to Rome], he told the emperor: 'Lord, be merry, here comes a doctor who will heal you and make you well of that illness.' And those wasps then heard those words and started to get mad inside the emperor's head and were eating him. And the emperor grew weak with the great pain and fell to the ground. And those emissaries came with the woman who had the face of God. And when the emperor saw them, he was very happy, and he had the woman with the face of God sit next to himself, and those wasps started to buzz loudly inside the emperor's head. And the blessed Arsenia said to the emperor: 'Will you believe in this face of God that you may now be healed of that illness?' And the emperor wailed loudly and said: 'I believe, with all my house, that this is the most holy face of God.' And the emperor knelt and bowed to the face of God. And that woman unveiled the face of God before the emperor and then those wasps fell out into the emperor's lap. And in those wasps evil spirits started to fly (The Žgombić collection reads here: počeše se letati besi, which is the text I chose to translate, while the Petris collection and the Croatian Academy's manuscript read: činiti vrazi - 'devils [started to] act.') and those devils wailed loudly, saying: 'Woe to us and evil to us, no one could ever expel us, except Arsenia with the face of God expelled us from our home'. And the emperor was healthy and he was baptized with all the Romans. Henceforth Christianity went throughout the world and is to this day.

And Arsenia said to the emperor: 'Lord, please have those judges in Jerusalem executed, Annas and Caiaphas and Pilate the duke, who have sentenced to death that Lord whose face made you well.' And then the emperor said: 'I will gladly do that.' And the emperor started to gather the army to destroy the city of Jerusalem and gathered a great army and sent two of his knights, Titus and Vespasian, with the army to Jerusalem. And the blessed Arsenia, having deposited the face of God in Rome, went with them. And when they arrived at Jerusalem, they could not conquer it, and they stayed before it for some time. And the emperor sent more armies to them and they took the city of Jerusalem. (...)

The rest of the text, though it contains some very interesting details, is not of interest to the study of acheiropoietos images and I will not translate it here.

Some thoughts on interpretational anachronism

2011-05-24T20:44:00.003+02:00

In what today is but a little-remembered lecture, Norman H. Baynes could once enjoy the privilege of being not only acutely right but also novel in his objection to the ‘water-tight-compartment method in research’. ‘The art historian’, he said, ‘works in his own sphere: the literature of early Christianity is not his concern: that is left to the patristic scholar.’Some eight decades later, we can no longer hope to be original in repeating the objection – in fact, it has been restated and dealt with so many times as to put us in great risk of truism and banality – but we do not have to worry about being any less right. Though he seems to have taken heed of Baynes’ criticism, and to have integrated his study of visual objects with that of the relevant textual sources, the art historian still employs the same method. He still studies his objects in water-tight compartments, in laboratory conditions, and still brings his personal preconceptions and opinionated judgements to the interpretation of evidence. As this essay will attempt to demonstrate, he merely does so in a different way.

I will not attempt here even a most condensed presentation of how the study of early Christian art has been integrated with the study of the era’s religious thought, as this was sufficiently and recently enough summarized by far more competent people to whose accounts I really could not add anything genuinely new. I can only refer my reader to the valuable expositions of the matter in Mathews (1993), Jensen (2000) and Snyder (2003). Suffice it to say, therefore, that the importance of the subtle link between early Christian art and theology has long been appreciated in many academic disciplines and that there has been no scarcity of scholars equally conversant with visual objects and relevant textual sources. Contrary to what Baynes was hoping for, however, this ‘binocular vision’ (I am borrowing this phrase from J. Polkinghorne's discussion of a similar link between theology and quantum physics. Cf., e.g., Polkinghorne (2007), passim) has only afforded more dimensionality to our perception of the subject, and has by no means moved us from speculation to objective observation. Using one particular issue as a sort of a case study, this essay will examine some of the reasons for this continuing controversiality of the field (Cf. Murray (2007), 56), and attempt to reassess the notions of objectivity and historicity as they apply to the interpretation of early Christian art.

The question that we shall concern ourselves with is whether opinions of later theologians have any relevance for a historically convincing interpretation of earlier works of art. And though answering it might, at first glance, seem to be easy enough, we hope to show that it is not only a question well worth asking, but one with a good deal of urgency to it as well.

The most succinct expression of what might seem to be the commonsensical answer is perhaps found in Paul Corby Finney’s preface to his well-known study of early Christian attitudes towards art: ‘It would be foolish to think one can ignore the history of interpretation surrounding this subject, as if one could separate a subject from its ongoing interpretation. In fairness, however, one must admit that much of what medieval and modern interpreters have said on our subject simply distorts the issue by imposing retrojections, later categories of thought that are foreign to the original evidence as we have it. (…) Judged from the perspective of pre-Constantinian Christianity, what Eusebius, Epiphanius, the Cappadocians, Ephrem, and Augustine had to say on our subject is irrelevant. The same is true for Karlstadt, Calvin and Zwingli, and other Reformers and Counterreformers. The complicating factor is that our subject is charged with what the French call actualité, immediate significance in the present, and thus there is a constant temptation to draw analogies between the past and the present. The history of interpretation surrounding our subject attests the considerable force of that temptation. But I have tried to resist it here and to limit inferences to what can be known based on the ancient evidence judged by its own proximate world of meaning (…)’. (Finney (1994), viii.)

Hans Belting holds a similar position, though he speaks of a considerably later period: ‘The doctrine of images is no obvious help, as it was developed “after the fact” by theologians during iconoclasm (…) and not with the intention of guiding the production of actual icons. It is therefore uncertain whether there existed an initial congruence between the theory and the form of the icon.’(Belting (1994), 115.) Even more importantly, Belting stresses that: ‘[m]odern books sometimes repeat the old arguments with the same awe that inspires their authors in front of old icons. They thereby give the impression that the old arguments had a genuine Christian origin and displayed a truly intellectual vigor, differing totally from pagan antecedents. We should, however, not be taken in by a doctrine that, in an attitude of self-defense, merely sublimates existing practices with icons and retrospectively lends them a theoretical sanction. The doctrine of the images (…) was an answer to pre-existing controversy. (Belting (1994), 144.)

What is common to these passages is the notion that what later theologians believed and professed about works of art that (in some cases) predated them by several centuries, can only be of interest for the history of interpretation. The theologians were not historians of art, nor were they interested in the kind of truth that modern-day scholars try to limit their pursuits to. In consequence, their opinions are thought to be irrelevant for the original context of the works’ production. And admittedly, to any historian, regardless of his or her religious conviction, such a notion will have a very strong verisimilitude and any concession to theology in that direction will carry an unsavoury flavour of dogmatism. Scholars like Finney and Belting seem, therefore, to be rightly separating out the theological chaff from the historical grain, and that seems to indeed be the commonsensical approach. We shall see, however, that there is an intrinsic fallacy to such a notion, and that no concession to theology is really necessary for its refutation. It could very well be discredited from a theological point of view as well, but that is not our ambition. What we propose to do here is to show that the notion is fallacious from a strictly academic position. And for that purpose a simple reassessment of what the original context of the works’ production actually was will more than do.

Now, though we said that we shall confine our commentary here to what can be observed from a historian’s point of view, we shall nevertheless start with a glance at some of the theological arguments. And the reason for that is twofold:

i) The two points of view (paradoxically as it may seem) actually share the same understanding of the formation of meaning.
ii) We hope to show that it is essential to start with an account of the theological point of view in order for the historical one to remain truly historical.

Let us first consider why the theologians felt themselves competent to speak of works of art at all and, more specifically, why they would (to use Belting’s phrasing) ‘retrospectively lend them a theoretical sanction’. Christian theologians did not believe the economy of salvation to have ended with Jesus death, resurrection and ascension, but merely to have reached a crucial point. These pivotal events have indeed complete the revelation (and Christians were to expect no further public revealing before the παρουσία), but the revelation has not been made completely explicit. It remained for Christian faith to gradually grasp its full meaning over the course of the centuries and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Cf., for instance, Jn xiv, 16-17; Rom viii. 26). In short, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the sacred deposit of faith (παραθήκη) was believed to grow in the life of the Church. And so when theologians would elaborate their attitudes towards art, they did not consider Christian images, whatever their age or provenance might have been, to be works conceived, shaped and essentially completed in the past, but living, growing agents in the economy of salvation and in the continuing unraveling of the revelation. Just as, in words of Gregory the Great, “divina eloquia cum legente crescunt”(11 Homilia in Ezechielem, 1,7,8: 76; PL 76,843D.), so were Christian images also able to grow and mature in their function and meaning, and this dynamic concept was believed to apply to both the personal level and to that of the Church. It was, therefore, irrelevant for theologians what the original context of a particular work’s production really was. It did not matter whether the actual artist had intended some function or meaning, or whether he was aware of what he was doing – the Church was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and man could be an agent of God’s work without (fully) realizing it. Works of art could be produced with one intention in mind, but their eventual purpose, as preconceived by God, could be something quite different and it could be revealed at only a much later stage. In a nutshell, because Christians were not left to their own devices, but Christ was with them unto the end of the world (Mt xxviii. 20), and because the Church was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God was believed to take interest in and guide everything that His people did – including their production of visual imagery. The real author of Christian artworks was therefore God, and when theologians spoke of them, they did not ‘impose retrojections’, as Finney writes, but merely illuminate what had previously been lying in the dark.

Now, if a historian was to prove such a notion scientifically unacceptable, he would have to do one of two things. One, he could provide evidence that the theologians were wrong in their belief that the Church really was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and prove that God, if He exists, does not take an active interest in the life of His people to the point of guiding the production of their religious art. He would have to prove that artists cannot, or at least did not, work as agents of God’s will, and that such things happen only in the hapless imaginations of the simple-minded. And in the following passage Belting indeed seems to attempt not only that, but even to take it a step further: ‘Ce n’est pas que dans les légendes que les images miraculeuses tombent du ciel. Il s’agit en fait d’oeuvres réalisées par des peintres et déterminées par les circonstances historiques, par leurs fonctions et par leurs modèles.’(Belting (1998), p. 109. I am quoting from the French translation because the text, as in several other significant places, differs here from both the German original and the English translation – and the French version makes my point clearest.) Obviously, Belting feels confident enough not only to deny the possibility of works of art being produced by men as agents of God, but also of images being miraculously produced by God Himself. And, of course, one may or may not share such personal convictions, but Belting is in any case overstepping his boundaries as a historian. It requires practically no argumentation, or even explanation, to say that a historian, or any scientist for that matter, should not make such statements part of his academic pursuits. Science can neither corroborate nor refute notions like the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of the Church, and Belting’s position, though it may, at first glance, appear to be a commonsensical, objective and agnostic one, is ultimately revealed to be not only unscientific but in fact theological

(If that was our purpose here, it could be argued that he is not only writing theology, instead of history, but also that he is writing theology with a clear denominational pointer. He is not only opposing the theological point of view in general, but specifically that of the Catholic Church. In that respect he is, to a large degree, inherting mistakes from other disciplines. Cf. Clark (2008), p. 9: 'Protestant scholars in Germany and England (outside the circle of the Oxford Movement) showed a decided preference for the Fathers of the first two centuries, who, in their view, remained closer to the revealed truth of the Bible. (...) Despite the German scholars' alleged embrace of the new historical and critical methods, their sectarian and anti-Catholic prejudices, overlaid with a modified Hegelianism, obstructed the development of a more solidly “historical” view of the early Church.' All of these objections could easily be applied to Belting's work, masterful as it is.).

And, as the reader will remember, that was one of the reasons why we have given valuable space to examining the theologians’ point of view – so that the historical approach might remain truly historical.

The other approach that a historian might choose in proving the theologians’ notions scientifically unacceptable would be to show that such an idea of the creation of meaning simply defies common sense and everyday experience. This would not stricto sensu prove them wrong – as religious matters on the whole tend to challenge the laws of rationality – but it could show them to be irreconcilable with academic pursuits. By showing that meaning in art never belongs to later interpreters, but only to the artist himself, and that it is strictly determined by his world-view and his intentions at the moment of a work’s production, the historian could prove the theologians’ beliefs to be simply unusable for the academic world. However, much of the twentieth century’s thought on art was dedicated to the exact opposite – to showing that meaning does not belong to the artist, that it is not determined by either his world-view or his intentions, and that it largely depends on the interpreter. One must, of course, be careful not to press such statements too far, and there is no space here to elaborate our case in all the necessary detail, but there is a handful of points that we can amply examine to show that meaning cannot be premeditated and willingly built into a work of art, and that the life of an artwork cannot be foreseen by any party involved in its production.

First of all, it has long been recognized in linguistics as well as in philosophy of language that occasionality plays a fundamental role in establishing the meaning of any statement

(Cf., for instance, Gadamer (2008), 88-89: 'By occasionality I mean dependency on the situation in which an expression is used. (...) Hermeneutical analysis is able to show (...) that such relativity to situation and opportunity constitutes the very essence of speaking. For no statement simply has an unambiguous meaning based on its linguistic and logical construction as such, but, on the contrary, each is motivated. A question is behind each statement that first gives it its meaning.')

And one of the valid ways of interpreting this is certainly to hold that no meaning can exist prior to the concretization and/or realization of an actual statement – which, in turn, means that a certain meaning can very well be intended by an artist or a patron, but that it can by no means be simply ‘willed into’ a work of art.

Secondly, a visual artist trying to will his intended meaning into one of his works would find the task even harder than if he was expressing himself in words – due to what may be called the density of the iconic code. For instance, if one was to write down: a house – a selection of the possible meanings of that verbal sign would be actualized by the occasionality of the utterance, by the context of the communicative situation, the use of punctuation marks, capitalization and appearance of the letters, the graphical organization of the paragraph and the like. But if one was to produce a picture of a house, as a visual sign intended to convey a message, than that sign’s meaning would be affected and actualized by an incomparably greater number of determinants. Not only would one have to choose amongst a plethora of architectural types (all of which equally denote a house, but with vastly different connotations), but the direction, thickness, shape and colour of every stroke used in the production of the sign could alter the meaning. This density of the iconic code, of course, opens space for trouvailles and lucky mistakes, andone must agree with Henri Focillon (Focillon (1993), passim.) who wrote that, in painting, the hand equally leads the mind as the mind does the hand. Therefore, the meaning and the use of a picture cannot be premeditated and executed in a way that someone might intend a use for a piece of simple machinery. The execution of a work of art is not a practical work of an engineer – in actual fact, the word execution here is a misnomer, for the artist rather searches and finds the meaning of his work, through a long series of experiments, often discarding his initial intentions altogether and looking to the material itself and to the ductus of the strokes to provide the final and best solutions. The hand leads the mind; the hand provides the mind with revelations, so to speak; it brings forth actualizations of possible meanings that the artist was completely unaware of before he commenced the actual work. We see, therefore, that it is not at all irreconcilable with academic pursuits to think that meaning could be something that is not predetermined by the artist’s (or the patron’s) initial intentions, but rather something that will only be gradually revealed through the very process of the work’s production.

A very similar notion can be found in literary criticism’s shift of focus and interest, in the first few decades of the 20th century, from the author to the work itself. The Russian Formalists and the New Criticism in Great Britain and the United States have, with their close-reading techniques, largely abandoned the idea that the author’s intentions are crucial in determining the work’s meaning, and have begun an evaluation of artworks as self-referential objects. In their understanding, the work needed to be emancipated from the author, and given a chance to speak on its own. They were intent on discovering only the intrinsic structures and inherent rules of an artwork and its medium, and if there was any meaning to be found, they considered it to be at least multiple. (I. A. Richards went as far as calling the belief in ‘One And Only One True Meaning’ – an act of superstition.) (Richards (1950), 39) Of course, their approach has also received its share of critique, most of all on the account of its being ‘unhistorical’ and ill-suited to certain types of artwork, but that should not concern us here. Our purpose is, let us remind ourselves, to show that a capital part of the 20th century’s academic thought on art shared its understanding of the formation of meaning with that of Christian theologians and that the latter is, therefore, not irreconcilable with academic pursuits.

It remains now to show that an artwork’s meaning is also gradually revealed through a history of subsequent interpretation, or, more precisely, that such an idea is not without precedent in the academic world either. This contention proceeds in part from what we have just stated – that meaning does not belong to the artist alone (much less to the patron), but depends largely on the occasionality of the utterance, as well as on what the artist’s medium itself will add to the message’s formation and actualization. From such postulations naturally follows that a scholar examining a work is actually in a better position to determine its meaning than its author could ever have hoped to be. But another shift in the literary criticism’s focus has attracted attention to the artwork’s reception not by scholars studying it, but by “ordinary” recipients using it – in perpetually new and unremittingly creative ways. Reader-response or reception theory, as it was developed in the 1960s and 70s, emphasized that signification in art is a process materialized only through reception by the audience18. Meaning, therefore, is neither a personal property of the author, nor is it inherent within the work itself. It is, rather, actively actualized by the audience, through interpretation, and it could even be argued that a work of art is, in actual fact, nothing but a history of its own interpretation. In words of Terry Eagleton: ‘The American critic Stanley Fish is quite happy to accept that, when you get down to it, there is no “objective” work of literature there on the seminar table at all, Bleak House is just all the assorted accounts of the novel that have been or will be given. The true writer is the reader: dissatisfied with mere Iserian co-partnership in the literary enterprise, the readers have now overthrown the bosses and installed themselves in power. For Fish, reading is not a matter of discovering what the text means, but a process of experiencing what it does to you.’(Eagleton (1996), 74) Again, these propositions are not without deficiencies, but, again, they should not trouble us here. Whether reception theory is basically saying that an artwork does not exist and/or that the audience is allowed to interpret it in any way may be very valid concerns of traditional critics, but we are not advocating the views of reception theory. We are only interested in showing that no concession to theology is necessary in order to think that the meaning of a work of art could, at least in part, belong to the history of its interpretation rather than to the artist himself.

We are certain that our task has, by its own nature, exerted a great deal of goodwill on the part of the reader. Before we venture to make any conclusion, therefore, it is probably judicious that we reiterate some of our main points here and emphasize what were and were not trying to say. When re-evaluating such delicate matters, one can not hope to succeed if he doesn’t make every effort to tread much more lightly than his opponents have done.

We have opened with a quote from Norman H. Baynes that accused the historian of early Christian art of working ‘in his own sphere’, utilizing a ‘water-tight compartment method’ in research and not paying sufficient attention to the textual sources of the era. In short, Baynes believed that a lot of problems in the field could be resolved if the study of visual objects was integrated with that of textual sources. And, as we have pointed out, this advice has been heeded by many eminent scholars, but the consensus over the interpretation of the evidence was not greatly increased thereby and the field remains filled with controversy. The reasons for this are many, but the paramount one, we believe, is that it is simply not sufficient that art historians familiarize themselves with a selection of early Christian texts for the two fields of study to be truly integrated. This integration must begin with an explicit setting of the goals – to write an integral history of Christian art, not an evaluation of teachings pertaining to it; to supplement the knowledge of visual objects with that of textual sources, not to extract assumptions from one type of evidence and force them as judgements unto another; to examine what the juxtaposition of various types of sources can add to the academic study of Christianity, not to the corroboration or refutation of one’s personal convictions.

There was no space here to allow for an exhaustive elaboration of all the aspects that such an integration should in fact entail. There was no space to lend much concreteness to the enterprise either. That was why we have chosen a specific question – whether opinions of later theologians could be relevant for a historically convincing interpretation of earlier works of art. And, after examining what would seem to be the commonsensical answer, as argued by two of the most prominent scholars in the field today, we have seen that such an answer, for all its verisimilitude, was at least problematic. As we hope to have demonstrated, it presented either a clear case of overstepping the boundaries of historical research, or a complete disregard for a prominent part of the 20th century’s academic thought on art – or, in the worst case, both.

Now let us have a look at what purpose we hope this has served. First of all, we are not forcing the Augustinian credo ut intelligam maxim upon the academic study of early Christian art, or somehow pushing the study of early Christian texts back into Thomistic aversion to the historical dimensions of issues. Focusing on our particular question here, we are not saying that theologians were right in their accounts of earlier works of art, or that if one does not see it, then it is so because he does not believe. We are, in fact, not answering that question at all, for the crux of what we are saying is that we must be careful not to overstep the boundaries of our proper discipline. If that means that certain questions must be left unanswered, such a reluctance to exceed one’s limitations is, we believe, anything but unscientific. It is better to leave a question unanswered, than to answer it on the basis of nothing but a vague verisimilitude and a commonsensical flavour of a notion extracted from one field of study and forced onto another. As we have seen, what seems commonsensical at first glance can, on closer inspection, be proved to be wholly unsubstantiated by any rational science and in fact theological.

Our goal was not to advocate any solution to the dilemma we decided to focus on. It was rather to draw attention to the fact that there is a dilemma – in order to initiate discussion of it. Our ultimate purpose was, ergo, to show that the notions of historicity and objectivity, as they apply to the interpretation of early Christian art, need to be reassessed. One does not need to consider John of Damascus to be a saint, or to accept that his writings on Christian images partook of the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church to greater and greater knowledge. That would be overstepping the boundaries of historical research. But one cannot refuse this notion either, because that too would entail crossing those boundaries. And, most importantly, one must, when he reads a passage like the following:

‘A certain conception through the senses thus takes place in the brain, which was not there before, and is transmitted to the judicial faculty, and added to the mental store.’ (John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images, Book I)

recognize that the author’s idea of the creation of meaning is not far removed from that of contemporary academic thought on art. He is speaking here of how images provide for our need for sensible things to render what is beyond sense, a notion that he borrowed from Pseudo-Dionysius. But the basic idea – that concepts do not, and cannot, exist in our minds without any actualization or materialization in either the verbal or the visual language – is the same as in contemporary academic thought. He would not put it in so many words, but it is basically what we would call the principle of linguistic relativity, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that language is not a means for expressing ideas, but that it determines what we are able to think at all. Therefore, such a passage, though it was written some thirteen centuries ago, is much more modern than are Belting’s objections to the doctrine of images having been developed ‘after the fact’. The matter obviously requires a much more considerate approach, and we hope that this essay provides enough pretext to at least initiate some discussion of it.

Bibliography
Baynes, Norman H. “Idolatry and the Early Church”, in Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), 116-143
Belting, Hans. Image et culte – Une histoire de l'art avant l'époque de l'art (Paris, 1998)
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence – A History of the Image before the Era of Art. (Chicago, 1994)
Clark, Elisabeth A. “From Patristics to Early Christian Studies”, in Harvey, S. A. and Hunter, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford: 2008), 7-41
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1996)
Finney, Paul Corby. The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York, 1994)
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Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by David. E. Linge (London, 2004)
Jensen, Robin. Understanding Early Christian Art (London, 2000)
John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images. Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Web 10 Nov 2010
Matthews, Thomas F. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, 1993)
Murray, Mary Charles. “The Emergence of Christian Art” in Spier, Jeffrey, ed. Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (London, 2007)
Polkinghorne, John C. Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (London, 2007)
Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York, 1950)
Snyder, Graydon F. Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (Macon, 2003)

(paper originally written for the University of Oxford's MPhil programme in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies)

2011-02-12T09:50:00.002+01:00