Post on 07-Feb-2023
Conor McDonough
c.e.mcdonough@gmail.com
Art & Truth: The Symbolics of the Passion
‘He is always to be before our eyes and his passion ought always
to be an example for us’ –
Peter Abelard, Sermo IX
Introduction
In the absence of iconoclastic controversies,1 the Western
church in the Middle Ages failed to produce a fully
elaborated theology of art. In this essay, I extrapolate
one possible theological understanding of art, by
examining the devotional practice and literature, and
artistic developments of the thirteenth century. This
theology of images, when considered in the light of a
certain understanding of the symbolic (which I outline
below), does grant art the capacity to convey truth, as it
emphasises holistic personal engagement, aimed at
transformation. Within the broad matrix of thirteenth-1 With some exceptions in the ninth century: Viladesau, R., The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2006), p. 62 f. The second part of Schönborn, C., God’s Human Face (San Francisco, 1994) outlines the Eastern iconoclastic controversy and examines the resulting theology of the image.
century art, I will look especially at the role of the
crucifix, a useful focus for a study of the engagement of
the devout imagination with works of art, and I will
consider its developing form.
While the tem ‘art’ refers to physical objects produced
by artists, I will also consider the mental images that
exist in symbiosis with prevailing artistic trends. It
seems to me that any investigation into the philosophical
and theological status of art must include consideration
of the imaginative reverberations of works of art. Thus,
I will investigate, as far as possible, the role of
mental images of Calvary alongside consideration of the
physical crucifix. As for ‘truth’, rather than
considering the concept in general, I will confine my
investigation to the conveyance and reception of a very
particular truth: that Christ died for our salvation. My
conclusions will be specific, but the theological model I
outline will be more widely applicable.
2
Following the extrapolative section of the essay, I will
consider what set of theological ideas might act to
justify or warrant the particular approach to images I
describe. The best foundation for the theology I unfold
is offered, I will argue, by Peter Abelard, with his
sacramental understanding of salvation.
Conceptual Framework
Twentieth-century theology has undergone a turn to the
symbolic, with great thinkers such as Tillich, Rahner,
Dulles and Ricoeur developing some sort of a theological
consensus on the capacity of symbols to reveal truth.2 It
is this consensus I wish to adopt as the conceptual
framework for my essay. A symbol is distinguished from an
indicative sign, on this account, because a sign refers
us to some ‘other’ (allos), whereas a symbol, in
Coleridge’s words, is tautegorical.3 That is, it refers us to
itself. Truth as communicated by a symbol is not
something to be grasped, but ‘an environment to be
2 Dulles, A., Models of Revelation (Dublin, 1992), p. 131.3 Coleridge, ‘The Statesman’s Manual’ in R.J. White (ed.), The Collected Works of S.T. Coleridge Vol. 6: Lay Sermons (London, 1972), p. 30.
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inhabited’.4 The type of knowledge granted by symbols,
then, is not ‘speculative’, but ‘participatory’.5
Secondly, while the truth we are here concerned with has
been introduced as a statement, truth communicated
symbolically cannot be, on the account I am adopting,
reduced to rational propositions. Rather, as Tillich puts
it, the symbol ‘opens up levels of reality which
otherwise are closed to us’.6
Finally, truth mediated by symbol, according to Victor
White, a disciple of Jung, ‘“does something to us”, it
moves us, shifts our centre of awareness, changes our
values’.7 It is this aspect of truth-communication,
personal transformation, which will resonate most with my
extrapolated theology of images.
The Gothic Crucifix and Its Context
4 Mitchell, N., ‘Symbols Are Actions, Not Objects’, Living Worship 13/2 (1977), p.1.5 Dulles, Models, p. 136.6 Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith (New York, 1957), p. 42.7 Quoted in Dulles, Models, p. 136.
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Throughout the High Middle Ages there developed a growing
emphasis on Christ’s humanity in theology and popular
practice.8 Greater and greater attention was paid to
Christ’s passion, and it is correct to describe the
passion as ‘the chief focus of emerging devotion to the
humanity of Christ’.9 Developments in devotional practice
concerning Christ’s humanity and passion led to
theologies of prayer which gave imagination pride of
place among the relevant human faculties. Images, ‘in the
sense of scenes conjured up before the mind’s eye… were
considered indispensable aids to prayer and meditation’.10
An emphasis on imaginative prayer invariably led to a
demand for emotive images which facilitated such
devotional activity.11
In the thirteenth century, not only did passion-art reach
new heights of popularity,12 but artists in the West began
8 Cousins, E., ‘The Humanity and the Passion of Christ’ in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987), p. 375.9 Ibid., p. 382.10 Honée, E., ‘Image and Imagination in the Medieval Culture of Prayer: A Historical Perspective’ in van Os, H., The Art of Devotion (London, 1994), p. 166.11 Ibid., p. 172.12 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 105.
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for the first time to depict Christ dead on the cross.
Far removed from the Romanesque Christus Triumphans, ‘who
transcends suffering and is victorious over death, gazing
out with head held erect’, the new model, Christus Patiens is
clearly dead: ‘his eyes are closed, his head bowed, and
his body begins to lose its upright stance, sagging to
the left’.13
The representation of Christ as dead on the cross was
part of a broader tendency to realism in the
religious art of the Middle Ages. Despite the decree
of the seventh-century Council of Trullo (which
approbated representation of Christ’s humanity),
depictions of the crucifixion in the West before the
thirteenth century, where they existed at all, tended
to be allegorical in nature, often making use of the
Christ-as-lamb metaphor.14 In the Romanesque period,
Viladesau alleges, ‘art is oriented to the
theological meaning of the cross, rather than its
13 Derbes, Picturing the Passion, p. 5. The historical causes of this changeare outside the scope of this essay.14 Brown, D., Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (Oxford, 1999), p. 350.
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external appearance’.15 Gothic crucifixes, on the
other hand, served an iconic function, I propose,
rather than a didactic or explanatory one. That is,
its aim was the mediation of presence, rather than
theological data. This is a difficult point to prove,
given the impossibility of saying with certainty how
any work of art is received, but there is much to be
said in its support.
Presence and the Cross
The innovation of the Tafelkreuz, a small, portable
crucifix, demonstrates the personal, devotional use
of the crucifix,16 separate from its liturgical
function. Such use in private prayer suggests that
the crucifix functioned to arouse the memoria of
Christ,17 which led, according to the Pseudo-
Bonaventurean author of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, to
‘familiarity’ with Christ.18 Furthermore, contemporary
15 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 69. 16 Kieckhefer, R., ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987), p. 85.17 Belting, p. 9.18 Ragusa, I. and Green, R.B. (trs. and eds.), Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton, 1961), p. 1.
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meditative manuals constantly stress our presence, via
the imagination, at the scene on which we meditate.
Adopting Mitchell’s terminology, they urge us to
‘inhabit the environment’ of the cross. In the
Meditationes again we find:
With your whole mind you must imagine
yourself present and consider diligently
everything done against your Lord and all
that is said and done by Him and regarding
Him.19
Finally, Bonaventure, in his Lignum Vitae, when he reaches
the point of Christ’s death, turns to Mary and notes
emphatically: ‘You were present at all these events,
standing close by and participating in them in every
way’.20
Dialogue with the Cross
19 Ibid., p. 333.20 Bonaventure, Lignum Vitae, 28 (emphasis mine).
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Receiving the new art as presence-mediating enabled
the development of a dialogical relationship between
the individual and the crucifix. Bonaventure’s Lignum
Vitae alternates between descriptive passages addressed
to the reader, and words addressed to Christ, clearly
meant to be made the reader’s own. Meditation on the
cross and passion explicitly involves dialogue with
Christ in Bonaventure’s method. While dialogue with
Christ is given prominence as early as Anselm,21 it is
only in the thirteenth century that religious art
enables and invites this dialogue. It is only then
that ‘pictures began to speak’.22 As Viladesau puts
it: ‘[The Gothic crucifix] is not simply a portrayal
of past history, [it] invites a living engagement, a
dialogue’.23
Compassion for Christ
The goal of this dialogue, this affective engagement,
with Christ, mediated by a physical or imagined
21 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 123. 22 Belting, H., Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994), pp. 126, 411.23 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 114.
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crucifix, is compassion for the suffering Christ. The
author of the Meditationes counsels us to ‘feel as much
compassion for [Christ] as we can’.24 It is in light
of this admonition that the innovation of showing
Christ weak and suffering, or dead, on the cross is
warranted. With the same purpose, Bonaventure invites
us to see Christ’s death through Mary, whose soul
‘had been more deeply pierced by a sword of
compassion than if [she] had suffered in [her] own
body’.25 This suffering with Christ is extended to
John and Mary Magdalene in the Meditationes, which
declares that ‘their compassion was renewed whenever
abuses or deeds added anew to the Passion of their
Lord’.26 The implication in all this is that, as those
who were gathered around the historical cross were
filled with compassion, so must the Christian be as
he kneels before a crucifix. This meditative model
embodies the Jungian principle that a symbol ‘shifts
our centre of awareness’. It is important to note
that the compassion evoked was not to be caused
24 Meditations, p. 331.25 Bonaventure, Lignum Vitae, 28.26 Meditations, p. 335.
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merely by ‘witnessing’ of Christ’s suffering, but
also by an awareness of the love that motivated him to
suffer. Pseudo-Bonaventure instructs us to
‘concentrate’ on the Passion, ‘for here is shown more
especially this charity of His that should kindle all
our hearts’.27
Spiritual Progress
The compassion evoked by reflection on the passion is
nowhere seen as an end in itself, however. Rather,
this devotion is best seen as a low rung on the
ladder to salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux offers a
reason for the Incarnation by stating that God became
man in order to
… recapture the affections of carnal men who
were unable to love in any other way, by
first drawing them to the salutary love of
his own humanity, and then gradually to raise
them to a spiritual love.28
27 Meditations, p. 318 (emphasis mine).28 Bernard of Clairvaux, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 20.6.
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It is in the light of this hierarchy that we must examine
imaginative meditation. Bonaventure enumerates six
‘powers of the soul’ which correspond to ‘six stages in
the ascent to God’.29 The senses and the imagination, the
two faculties used in the devotion outlined thus far are
paired with the first two stages. In the Meditationes,
beholding the crucifix is food indeed, which ‘nourishes
sweetly’, but it is held to ‘lead on to better food’;
‘this strong foundation lifts you to a higher degree of
contemplation’.30
The spiritual transformation alluded to was no mere
mundane advancement, however; the compassion brought
about in the believer by engaging with Calvary in the way
described is in fact held to be soteriologically
significant. The content of the dialogue with the
crucifix included, according to Viladesau, ‘appropriation
of the salvation it [Christ’s death] effected’.31
Bonaventure’s treatise, The Soul’s Journey into God, would seem
29 Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, 1.6.30 Meditations, p. 385, 3. 31 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 127.
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to support this assertion, for even in the final stage,
that of ‘spiritual and mystical ecstasy’ when we ‘pass
over’, Christ is still ‘the way and the door’; even then,
Whoever turns his face fully to the Mercy
Seat and… beholds him hanging upon the cross,
such a one makes the Pasch, that is, the
Passover, with Christ.32
Bonaventure holds St Francis’ mystical experience, in
which (and after which) he literally suffered with Christ,
as an example of this ‘passing over’. Nowhere does he
explicitly state that ‘passing over’ represents
salvation, but it is couched in terms to do with
salvation (‘ascend to the superessential ray’; ‘see God’;
‘leaving behind all things and freed from all things’)
and it is clear, again, that the spiritual progress
involved is not horizontal, but does involve a real
ascent. ‘With Christ crucified’, Bonaventure writes, ‘let
us pass out of this world to the Father’.33 It seems,
32 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 7.2.33 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 7.6.
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then, that ‘affective contemplation of the Passion’, with
its abundant use of supportive images, was indeed held to
be ‘the best way for the individual believer to bring the
salvation that Christ wrought for all mankind within his
reach’.34 The truth of Calvary, then, as encountered in
the crucifix, was so transformative as to be, in some
sense, salvific.
Thus, despite lacking a clearly elaborated theology of
images, the Western Church had effectively, by the
thirteenth century, arrived at the position that images,
in particular, works of art to do with the passion and
their imagined correlates, have a role in the personal
transformation of individual Christians, and even their
salvation. What could possibly justify this iconophilia?
Justification: Abelard
Whose soteriology, or mystical theology, offers a
satisfactory conceptual basis for passion meditation of
the type outlined? Anselm’s extra-personal, ‘cosmic’
34 Honée, ‘Image and Imagination’, p. 165.
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account of salvation35 has no place for such a
‘subjective’ encounter with the cross, while Bernard, is
too uncomfortable in speculative mood to offer a
sufficiently systematic basis (his maxim in attacking
soteriological speculations is telling: ‘Mihi scire licet quod
ita: cur ita, non licet’).36 The best ground for devotion to the
passion is offered, I propose, by the (then
controversial) soteriology of Peter Abelard. Often
mistakenly characterised as Pelagian, merely exemplarist
(to the exclusion of other motifs), or subjective,37
Abelard’s understanding of how salvation ‘works’ is based
not primarily on notions of justice (which would seem,
unacceptably, to place God under necessity) but on the
idea of the cross as a sign of God’s love for us.
Commenting on the Epistle to the Romans, Abelard
establishes a dialectic between God’s love for us and our
responding love: the aim of the cross is simultaneously
‘to show forth his love to us’ and ‘to convince us how
35 Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, particularly 1.11-25 and 2.4-29.36 Bernard of Clairvaux, S. Bernardi Abbatis contra quaedam capitula errorum Abaelardi epistola, seu tractatus ad Innocentem II Pontificem, 7, PL 182, 1069.37 Quinn, P.L., ‘Abelard on Atonement: “Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary, Illogical, or Immoral about it”’, in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honour of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump (New York, 1993) redresses the balance on all three points.
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much we ought to love him’.38 It is in the context of this
dialectic in which the cross is simultaneously sacrament
and invitation to engagement, that devotion to the
passion based on being present to and engaging with the
suffering Christ, finds coherence.
In order to give content to this dialectic of love,
Abelard defines righteousness as being made ‘a greater
lover of the Lord’.39 Dialogue with the cross, then, if it
has the capacity to ‘kindle’ love for Christ in our
hearts, must be capable of playing a role in our being
made righteous. The equivalence is stated even more
explicitly: ‘our redemption through Christ’s suffering is
that deeper affection in us’ which characterises the new
age of grace.40 If, then, beholding the cross has the
effect of ‘renewing [our] compassion’ as it did that of
the beloved disciple and Mary Magdalene,41 might it not
lead to redemption?
38 Abelard, Exposition on the Epistle to the Romans, tr. E.R. Fairweather (London, 1956), p. 279.39 Abelard, Exposition, p. 284.40 Ibid., p. 284 (emphasis mine).41 Meditations, p. 335.
16
In Abelard’s hymns, also, there is a connection made
between our compassionate suffering with Christ and our
ultimate end: ‘[M]ake us have compassion on thee, Lord/
That we may sharers of thy glory be’ and ‘Let our hearts
suffer for thy passion, Lord/ That sheer compassion may
thy mercy win’.42 Morris, despite mistakenly describing
Abelard’s soteriology as ‘subjective’, is correct to
point out that, in these hymns, affection for the
suffering Christ ‘becomes almost the central point of the
passion, as if man were justified by compassion, by pity
for suffering humanity’.43 This enormous emphasis on
compassion could provide a defence on its own for the
thirteenth-century developments in depicting Christ’s
dead body on the cross. Similarly, a dialogical
engagement with the cross, ‘centred on affective
sympathy’,44 may be justified if the very purpose of the
crucifixion is to provide a sacramental sign which evokes
a responsive love in us.
42 Morris, C., The Discovery of the Individual 1050-1200 (Toronto, 1987), p. 143.43 Ibid., p. 143.44 Viladesau, Beauty, p. 114.
17
A further aspect of Abelard’s soteriology which makes it
fit to act as the conceptual ground for devotion to the
cross is its cumulative character. The crucifixion is
presented as ‘a realised gift’,45 the consummation of
salvation history, rather than a one-off event, as if
discontinuous with God’s providential care for Israel.
This sense is present in the most famous passage of the
Exposition, where Abelard declares that Christ in ‘teaching
us by word and example even unto death… has more fully bound
us to himself by love’.46 Speaking in terms of our
progression and ascent, as the manuals on the passion do,
seems singularly appropriate if our ascent begins as a
response to God’s progressive action in our regard.
An understanding of salvation which is based primarily on
God’s progressive transformation of man, as Abelard’s is,
rather than on the idea of a debt to be paid in a
transaction necessarily involving God and man (as, for
example, Anselm’s does), is, then, the best foundation
for engagement with the cross. Anselm, Bernard and
45 Abelard, Exposition, p. 284.46 Ibid., p. 285 (emphasis mine).
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Abelard agree that praying before a crucifix is salutary,
but only Abelard could coherently account for its salvific
dimension.
Conclusion
Throughout this essay, I have unfolded (and attempted to
ground) a theology of images which emphasises an
involvement of the whole person, senses, imagination and
affections, and which includes the aim of personal
transformation. This set of theological ideas includes
the possibility of art conveying truth symbolically if
this communication involves inhabiting, rather than
apprehending, the truth in question. Devotion to the
passion as outlined here embodies this principle, for the
emphasis has been not on merely understanding what is meant
by the statement ‘Christ died for our salvation’, but on
being present at Calvary, not on simply gaining salvation,
but on entering a transformative dialectic of love.
Engagement with the truth of Calvary then, admits and
demands more than cerebral apprehension. Of course, if
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Abelard is right to view the cross as a sign or sacrament
of God’s fathomless (and therefore incomprehensible) love
for us, this goes without saying.
The developments in artistic representations of the
crucifixion in the thirteenth century also make sense
within this theoretical model. The change in focus from
communicating ideas (as in allegorical representations)
to mediating presence and inviting dialogue (with the
suffering and dead Christ) involves a shift towards
‘participating’ in truth. The change is from an
allegorical to a tautegorical understanding of art.
Likewise, devotion to the passion in the thirteenth-
century exemplifies the transformative dimension of
symbolic communication of truth. Personal transformation,
involving especially the growth of affection for Christ,
was an essential element of engaging with the crucifix,
as I have shown. In Peter Abelard’s soteriology, the
transformation worked by the symbol of the crucifix even
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opens out onto salvation, giving a plenitude of meaning
to the phrase ‘saving truth’.
The iconophilia of the High Middle Ages, then, seems to
be theologically grounded. Thirteenth-century crucifixes
and meditation manuals are compelling witnesses to the
theory that symbols convey truth via their transformative
capacity and inhabitability, providing a specific case of
a more general theory, in which a work of art, if used to
immerse oneself in a formative imaginative ‘environment’,
is capable of mediating truth. In the thirteenth-century
practice of involvement in the passion by means of man-
made artistic objects such as the crucifix, it may be
said, in the light of twentieth-century reflection on the
symbolic mediation of truth, that Calvary’s truth is
indeed conveyed.
21
Bibliography
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Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, tr. E.H. Cousins (New York, 1978)
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Brown, D., Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (Oxford,1999)
Cousins, E.H., ‘The Humanity and the Passion of Christ’ in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987)
Dulles, A., Models of Revelation (Dublin, 1992)
22
Kieckhefer, R., ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987)
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Schönborn, C., God’s Human Face (San Francisco, 1994)
Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith (New York, 1957)
van Os, H., ‘Image and Imagination in the Medieval Culture of Prayer: A Historical Perspective’ in van Os, H. (ed.), The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe (London, 1994)
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