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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Bibliography

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Aulén, G., Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, tr. A.G. Hebert (London, 1950).

Belting, H., Likeness and Presence: a history of the image before the eraof art (Chicago, 1996)

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)

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Kieckhefer, R., ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987)

Morris, C., The Discovery of the Individual 1050-1200 (Toronto, 1987)

Pseudo-Bonaventure, Meditations on the life of Christ : an illustrated manuscript of the fourteenth century, tr. Ragusa, I. and Green R.B. (Princeton, 1961)

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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)

Viladesau, R., The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theologyand the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2006)

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