Morgan Library: Images of Christ, St. Peter, and the Trinity

Here are some out-of-the-ordinary images I saw today at the Morgan Library. At the end I put a glossary for readers who may be unfamiliar with some of the terms used here.

The Lindau Gospel Book: On the back cover (mid- to late-8th cent.) is a cross with 4 identical champlevé busts of Christ, one on each arm. Christ looks at us frontally with his arms crossed. Beneath a cloak with a wide margin he wears a garment with a sort of turtleneck top with horizontal folds at the neck. What are those folded arms all about?

On the front cover (ca. 870-880) is a repoussé Crucifixion. It is halfway between the old and new ways of portraying Christ on the cross. On the one side, there is an appeal to pathos: he is naked except for his perizoma, and blood flows from the nails in his hands. On the other, there is a stately calm. The blood from each hand does not gush but forms a pattern like a bunch of grapes. The eyes are open and the head is not nodding. Most impressively, the figures of John and the women float horizontally in the space below the crosspiece, not grief-struck but as if already in Heaven.

Older, and many medieval, crucifixion images show the sun and the moon. Here they are presented as allegorical figures framed by the uppermost part of the riser of the cross, above the "King of the Jews" label.

Next, in a sacramentary from Mont St. Michel (ca. 1060), the martyrdom of St. Peter. We see Peter on the cross upside-down. After the publication of the Golden Legend two centuries later, it was usual to portray Peter this way, but I don't know how early this motif began. The design is very bold. At the top (i.e. the end of the inverted cross) is a circle from which Christ looks approvingly down on the scene. He is on the same axis as Peter, and the parallelism is no doubt intended. Peter himself is fully dressed in the kind of apostolic garb one sees in statues of the apostles from this period, and he has a serene dignity that few of us could manage in his position. The suppedaneum is so generous in size that one could imagine the saint using it as a soapbox to address a crowd.

A gradual illumination (1392-99) by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci of the Last Supper. The 12 sit with Christ around a round table, and we see them from above at an angle that lets us see each one's face. All have gold haloes, except Judas: he has a halo, but it is black! He is chewing on what looks for all the world like an Italian breadstick.

The same gradual has an illuminated B for Trinity Sunday. In the lower bulge of the B is the Hospitality of Abraham, with the patriarch kneeling in worship before the three men. The upper bulge presents the Trinity as three identical men facing us from the other side of an altar. All the Trinitys I have seen that show three identical men were from the 17th century, so this is remarkable. (See my webpage on the iconography of the Trinity.) The manner of distinguishing the three persons is also remarkable. Only the Son has a cross in his halo, and he stands in the middle, holding a host in one hand and a chalice in the other -- i.e., serving as priest at the sacrifice of the Mass. Above him is a book containing his words ego sum via et veritas et vita from John's Last Supper narrative. The Holy Spirit is at his right hand, with a dove above him. Above the Father is an armillary sphere.

Glossary
Perizoma -- the loincloth that Christ is shown wearing on crucifixes. Actually, crucifixion victims were always naked. See my webpage on the iconography of the Crucifixion.
Champlevé -- "A type of enameling in which powdered glass is placed in areas of a piece of jewelry that have been carved away specifically for this purpose before firing. The glass powder melts filling the carved areas with solid glass." -- Stuckonthee.com
Repoussé -- The process of raising a figure or decoration on a metal piece by hammering it from behind.
Sacramentary -- one of the books used in the Mass. It gives the eucharistic prayer and other prayers that will be recited by the priest.
Suppedaneum -- the little footrest usually provided for the figure on crucifixes. It allowed crucifixion victims to prolong their agony by pushing themselves up a little to relieve pressure on their lungs.
Gradual -- a large choir book with musical notation used in the Mass. The large size allows several persons to sing from it at once.

The Dormition of Mary

I just went through Brian E. Daley's On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies looking for passages in these early works that would be relevant to later images of the Dormition and the Assumption. There is a lot of variety in how these events are portrayed, both in eastern and in western Christian art. Here are some gleanings:

1. John of Thessalonika (7th century) says Christ "took her [Mary's] soul and placed it in the hands of Michael [the archangel], after wrapping it in veils of some kind, whose splendor it is impossible to describe." We see Christ doing this (although the angel is not identified as Michael) in a Byzantine icon of 950-1000 in the Metropolitan Museum.
2. According to this John, when the Apostles bore Mary's bier from her deathbed they sang from Ps. 113 (114), "When Israel came out from the land of Egypt." Daley suggests that this reflects burial practices of the early 6th century. The same psalm is mentioned in St. Andrew of Crete's 3rd homily on the Dormition.
3. Several of the homilists make comments consistent with a belief in the Immaculate Conception. Theoteknas of Livias: "She was begotten like the cherubim, from pure and spotless [Daley supplies 'clay']" (p. 72). Also St. Andrew of Crete (Homily I, p. 113), "she entered and left this life in a wonderful way" (though that might refer to her mother's long barrenness).
4. In Homily II, Andrew seems to be referring to an icon that is present while he speaks and says, "what a great multitude are gathered here" as Mary's life ends (p. 129). Then he speaks of the procession to Gethsemane also as if they could see an image of it. He also says (p. 131), "Dionysius speaks of 'many of our holy brethren,' so it seems clear that the seventy, those appointed disciples of Christ in second place, were also present in that divinely chosen gathering."
5. A palm branch is mentioned several times. John of Thessalonica says "the great angel" brought her a palm branch and said, " Rise, Mary, take this branch of palm, which he who planted Paradise gave to me, and give it to the Apostles, so that they may carry it as they sing before you, for after three days you will lay aside your body" (p. 49). It is also in Germanus of Constantinople Homily II (p. 173)
6. Germanus presents the deathbed scene liturgically. Peter urges Paul to say "the customary prayer over the Virgin's remains" (p. 175). Similarly, John of Damascus' 2nd Homily says, of her death, "Then there must have been inspired speech, words that spoke of God! Then there must have been heavenly singing, celebrating her departure from this world!" (211). Later, speaking of the aftermath of her death, he postulates the following: "Her body would have been wrapped in fresh cloths, and the Queen placed again on her couch. Then lamps would have been brought, ointments applied, funeral hymns sung; the angels would have chanted, in their own tongue, a song most fitting for them, while the Apostles and holy ancestors would have sung sacred canticles, inspired by the Spirit" (215).
   
7. In Germanus the Virgin's shroud is important to the events. The apostles use it to lift her, so they won't have to touch her body, into the tomb. Then she is taken from them (3 days do not intervene in this account): "Who took it, no one could see -- for God is invisible! But the shroud was then gently taken up into the air from the Apostles' hands in a light cloud" (p. 177).
   

NYC Subway Art: The 4 Line

I moved this posting over to my other blog, Art Views and Reviews.

Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs

Just finished Gregory of Tours’ Glory of the Martyrs, which I purchased because of its Marian sections. I’ll try to give Gregory his due here. He did write The History of the Franks, an important resource, but basically this bishop of Tours makes 6th century Christianity look pretty bad.

The "glory" goes like this. God sees to it that lots of miracles occur when his martyrs are invoked, not invoked when they should be, or in any way insulted or neglected. That is, even when a 3rd-class relic is invoked or abused, you can expect some real action.

Most dismaying is Gregory’s delight in what I would call the petulance of these martyrs. They are continually visiting disaster on people who steal from their shrines or swear falsely by them or simply refuse to honor them. Priests, too, are said to have rejoiced when their favored saints lay enemies low.

Now, in the broad outline and standing way back, I can see a certain sense in this: The martyr is rewarded for his perseverance by being made a cynosure and given that place at the head of the table that Jesus promised the humble. But don’t stand any closer, because Gregory’s superstition is most distressing. For example, he often will ascribe miraculous curative powers to water that has simply washed over a 2nd-class relic such as a piece of cloth that touched the martyr (or in one case even just enwrapped the Cross). The cures are always physical, or at best psychiatric, never spiritual. No relic in this book turns anyone into a good person.

There is very little of the vita in these accounts, and hardly any passio. I guess the idea is that we are seeing the saint at work, so that’s like telling his life. But one does get some insights into the society of the time:

· Heresy – i.e., Arianism – was still a formidable force in Gaul/France, notwithstanding the 5th-century conversion of the Franks to catholic Christianity.

· Bishops were from the upper class, and apparently what they say goes.

· Miracles are so pervasive that it becomes hard to tell whether Gregory is a liar or just hugely deluded. He often tells of miracles and evidence of miracles that he saw with his own eyes, and they are so far-fetched that it has to be one or the other.

· Clergy are married.

· The sacrament of the altar is revered. I notice Gregory does not bring it into his orbit of weird stories. Either he has some decency or perhaps he excluded eucharistic miracles because the book is about those or martyrs.

· Some of the martyrs are from Italy, with which there seems to be a lot of communication – even spurious communication: Pope Clement I is said, improbably, to have sent missionaries into Gaul.

· All but two or three of the saints in the book are men. Exceptions are St. Eulalia, a nun, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. (This book is the first in Latin to mention the Assumption. Its most lyrical paragraph is the one about Eulalia and the doves and the snow.) He says that greed is a vice of the female mind: at least in the translation one cannot tell whether he means only women are greedy or that greed is effeminate; he does include stories of greedy men.

It did me good to read this and see what things were like at that point, but it was an unpleasant experience. It makes a good case for unmarried clergy, at least in that historical period: Gregory’s family were practically hereditary bishops, and at least one member of the family was a long way from being up to the job.

It also shows the real problem with superstition. When you convince yourself that piety consists in collecting relics that will wring favors from the Almighty, real piety withers away. All Gregory has left is an effete default state in which greed is bad, the opposite sex cannot be trusted, and revenge is sweet as long as its object is someone who has offended God or his saints.

The translator is Raymond Van Dam. Liverpool UP, 1988. 0-85323-236-9