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Christian Materiality and the Mass

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Christian Materiality and the Mass Christian materiality and the mass In-program references • Asad p. 84ff • Armstrong on daily martyrdom p. 209 • Armstrong on William of Norwich (ch. 5) INTRO Last week I talked about the foundations of Christian art, and how representations of Christ changed from Roman-esque and unprofessional under a state of persecution to imperial and highly codified under the Byzantines. [SLIDES] I now want to talk about the medieval period, where Armstrong starts, when crucifixions were the dominant mode of representing Jesus. And I want to start with the questions I ended with: - what function did these images serve for believers? As I said to my seminar students last week, one of the most beautiful contradictions of martyrdom is that the body is the witness, it is the sign of god’s grace, and yet it is also the thing you are trying to escape in order to get closer to god. This contradiction is made more profound through the idea of the incarnation: how do you represent a god who is also a man, who was here, but not really here? And the contradiction of the incarnation is made even more intense when we attempt to represent the crucifixion, that even that signaled the reclamation of the entire world from sin. But before we can talk about the crucifixion as a representation (remember Amjad’s definition of representation) we have to talk about the theology behind Christ’s martyrdom. And before that, a quick timeline – where are we in history? [timeline slide] THE INCARNATION [Corinthians slide] Corinthians was one of the letters written by the Apostle Paul to new Christians Key concept: we suffer, but we suffer in imitation of Christ, and take comfort in the fact that Christ through the incarnation became flesh in order to make the ultimate physical sacrifice and save our souls from eternal damnation. The mystery of Christianity (and of all religion—but Christianity’s mystery is manifested most clearly in the incarnation) is the question of how we can build a bridge between the human and the divine. The goal of the mass, in which believers consume the body and the blood of Christ in the wafer and the communion wine, is to: - memorialize the passion - cleanse the believer’s sins - inflame the believer with love of god - endow the believer with the virtue of enduring suffering [slide of last supper] This ritual stems, in part, from Christ’s commandment to his disciples at the last supper: he told them that when he was no longer with them, they should break bread together and drink wine in remembrance of him. But the mass is more than merely a commemoration; it is a re-enactment. [slide of host] Hoc est corpus meum The key gesture at the heart of the mass is known as transubstantiation. This is the miracle through which the wafer and the wine become the body and the blood of Christ through the power of the ritual. The priest holds the host or wafer over his head so that the entire congregation can witness the miracle. In the medieval period, the wafer was a piece of bread, blessed by the priest, taken with wine. [slide of elevation] [Talk about framing, separation] One way of thinking about this miracle is to compare it to the theater. Western theater as we know it emerged, in part, from plays that depicted the life of Christ, including his death and resurrection. How did these differ from the mass? The answer is that the play (like a painting) is a representation of the crucifixion, while the mass is a presentation of the crucifixion—if you believe in the incarnation, you believe that the crucifixion is happening all over again each time the mass is celebrated. Christ is literally present in the communion wafer (or bread) and wine. [talk about speech acts?] Thus the mass was both a reenactment of the crucifixion and of the last supper; the congregants were both themselves and the disciples, the priest was both himself and a stand- in for Christ, since he had the power to complete the miracle by speaking the words “hoc est corpus meum” and elevating the host. Transubstantiation is not easy to wrap your mind around, and there have been skeptics all along. Some even believe that the origin of the phrase “hocus pocus” comes from the garbling of the Latin phrase uttered by the priest: “Hoc est corpus meum” (this is my body). Medieval believers were not unaware of the leap of faith that the transubstantiation required. [slide Ysenbrandt] The story of the Mass of St. Gregory was a particular version of the miracle of the mass that attempted to make the meaning of transubstantiation more palpable. A proliferation of images of the Gregory mass were painted between the 1460s and 1530s. The original story concerned the satisfaction of a woman’s doubts about the real presence in the Mass when a host turned into a bleeding finger in front of the officiating priest, St. Gregory the Great. In versions from the 14th c. onwards, Christ himself began appearing on the altar in front of Gregory, and eventually, as the Man of Sorrows surrounded by the instruments of the passion. Christ’s suffering body was usually depicted appearing during the consecration or the elevation and sometimes shown dripping blood directly into a conveniently placed chalice. There was problem, however, with literalizing the miracle. In the words of one critic, Christine Gottler: “By making visible the essential nature of the Eucharist, which is, however, nonvisible to the corporeal eye, the imagery of Saint Gregory’s miraculous mass also exposes the fictitious character of visual evidence. The otherwise inexplicable miraculous appearance of Christ is brought into being by the artist.” Pick this apart from a moment. What is Gottler saying about the proper, or improper, relationship between religious miracles and visual art? [slide] rood and rood screen In between the people seated at mass and the priest elevating the host was what was called a rood screen, named for the “rood” or wooden crucifix that sat on top of it. So, when you went to mass you were permitted to see but not quite see the transubstantiation, and you were given a visual representation of the crucifixion so that you could associate it with the miracle taking place in the ritual THE CRUCIFIXION Christ was the bridge between the human and divine during his lifetime; after his death and resurrection, Christians participate in the ritual of the mass in order to celebrate that sacrifice and, in a sense, participate in it. Visual representations of the crucifixion, when used as devotional tools, perform a similar function, allowing the viewer to imaginatively re-enact Christ’s death. [slide parody] As we discussed, however, there are very few if any representations of the crucifixion in the early church. [slide madonna] There are other ways of representing the incarnation, and this is one of them. But by far the most powerful and prevalent image of Christ in the medieval period was the image of the crucifixion, the final phase of what is known as the passion (from the Latin word for suffering – cf. compassion, sympathy). Starting in the 4th century, the theology of the cross became more and more important and eventually became the dominant image of the medieval and renaissance periods. The purported discovery of the True Cross by Constantine’s mother, Helena, and the development of Golgotha as a site for pilgrimage, together with the dispersal of fragments of the relic across the Christian world, led to a change of attitude. As a broad generalization, the earliest depictions, before about 900, tended to show all three crosses (those of Jesus, the Good Thief and the Bad Thief), but later medieval depictions mostly showed just Jesus and his cross. The number of other figures shown depended on the size and medium of the work, but there was a similar trend for early depictions to show a number of figures, giving way in the High Middle Ages to just the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist, shown standing on either side of the cross, or sculpted or painted on panels at the end of each arm of a rood cross. Related scenes such as the Deposition of Christ, Entombment of Christ and Nailing of Christ to the Cross developed. In the Late Middle Ages, increasingly intense and realistic representations of suffering were shown, reflecting the development of highly emotional andachtsbilder subjects and devotional trends such as German mysticism; some, like the Throne of Mercy, Man of Sorrows and Pietà, related to the Crucifixion. As Amjad mentioned, Italian depictions tended to be more mythical, more tranquil, while Northern Renaissance painting (which we prefer, in case you couldn’t tell) was more localized, more realistic, and often more gruesome. So why the flood of crucifixions in the medieval period? In part, it was because there had been a solidification and institutionalization of Christian communities, so there was no longer a need to focus exclusively on powerful/positive images of Christ as emperor or good shepherd. Other scholars argue that we need images of violence to keep people in line. It is worth noting that martyrdom was not an active part of Christian life in the medieval period the way it was in the early Christian period. People still revered the early Christian saints, but they had become models for living rather than models for dying--there was no active, widespread persecution. [slide] Giotto Images like Giotto’s were part of a devotional context; the witness figures in the painting show us how we are to behave when we ourselves see depictions of Christ’s suffering or attend mass.
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