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The Beauty Of The Cross

Andrea Dall'Asta, SJ - La Civiltà Cattolica - Fri, Dec 2nd 2022

The Beauty Of The Cross

The cross: archetypal symbol

The cross[1] is a simple geometric figure, made of two perpendicular lines at right angles. This shape, known to different civilizations, is an archetypal symbol that has always been interpreted as a “passage,” a mediation between Earth and sky, the finite and the infinite, contingent and eternal. The intersection of the two axes, the fifth “point” of the cross is considered at the same time the center of the circle and the center of the square, which allows communication between two worlds: Heaven and Earth, the finite and the infinite. That point is the center of the cosmos, the omphalos, as it were.

Known in ancient cultures to indicate life and the divine – in the Egyptian world, for example, the pharaoh held in his hands the ansata cross, which alludes to the gift of rebirth and immortality – the cross has become the Christian symbol par excellence, taking on, from the early centuries, multiple anthropological and cosmological values. The Fathers of the Church have elaborated countless reflections on the Cross.

Thus, if for Justin Martyr (110-163/167) man differs from other animals in that he is upright and can stretch out his hands, thus indicating the shape of the cross, for Bishop Maximus of Turin (380-420) man walking and raising his arms, as well as the vault of heaven itself, is in the shape of a cross.[2] It becomes the seal of creation, the secret that lives at the heart of the cosmos, so much sought after by Greek philosophy and now finally recognized. Christian faith can thus give a name to what was sought  by Greek philosophers, beginning with the pre-Socratics and then Plato. 

 

Justin, seeking to create a link between philosophy and the new Christian world, reflects on how Plato, to Justin’s way of thinking, in the Timaeus conceived of the nature of the Son of God according to the form of the X (the letter chi of the Greek alphabet, which has the graphic form of a saltire), without however understanding that that sign was the cross. He writes, “The statement contained in Plato’s Timaeus concerning the nature of the Son of God, where he says, ‘He arranged him in the universe in the form of an X,” he borrowed from Moses.[3] Justin continues: “Plato, having read this and not understanding its meaning and not knowing that the sign was that of the cross, but thinking of an X, affirmed that Virtue, which comes second after the first principle God, is arranged in the shape of an X in the universe.”[4] Plato would therefore have intuited the truth, without however having the revelation needed to name it.

In short, the cross is what is most profoundly inscribed since the foundation of the world, and every creature bears its seal. The theologian Gérard de Champeaux summarizes well the reflections of the early Fathers of the Church when he defines the cross as a “synthetic expression of the fundamental structural identity, the man-cosmos.”[5] Hugo Rahner can affirm that the cross is “the law of construction, the fundamental scheme that God imprints on his work, this God who secretly, from the beginning, had his eyes fixed on the cross of his Son.”[6]

The cross and the tragic event of Jesus’ death

It is clear that the historical event of the cross of Christ leads to an unprecedented reflection on how to represent the death of that man, taking into account that his tragic death, reserved for slaves, is infamous, shameful, terrible, difficult to accept even for Christians. How can we recognize the God in whom we believe in that body hanging on a stake and destined to corruption? For Paul of Tarsus, Christ crucified is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23): his “vision” creates difficulties, and this is why Christians refrained from representing Jesus on the cross for a long time.

Moreover, the Christian communities of the first generations were reluctant to represent God in human form. Instead, we know of a depiction of a crucifixion drawn with blasphemous intent by a detractor of Christianity, such as the famous graffito of Alexamenos (1st-3rd century), on the Palatine in Rome, in which a Christian stands in front of a strange crucifixion, with an anthropomorphic figure and donkey’s head, accompanied by the sarcastic phrase: “Alexamenos worships his God.”

The cross became the symbol of Christianity beginning from the age of Constantine (274-337), after his mother Helen, during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, is said to have recovered what remained  of the true cross. Up to that moment, in order to represent their own creed, the Christians had made use of symbolic images: from the fish to the rooster, from the anchor to the peacock and to the monogram “chi-rho.” In particular, the term “fish” – in ancient Greek ?χθ?ς – transliterated in the  characters making up  ichthys, was widely used in the Roman catacombs, and is an acronym used by early Christians to indicate “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” (I?sous Christos, Theou Yios, S?t?r).

The first representations of ‘that’ body

To understand this difficulty in representing the crucifixion, let us remember that in canon 36 of the Synod of Elvira (present-day Granada), held around 300, the use of images in churches was discouraged.[7] However, from the Constantinian period onward a iconographic repertoire developed, in which Christ was presented in the images of the Good Shepherd, the Maiestas Domini, and the Traditio Legis. Not only that, but Christ often takes the form of the lamb, according to an image that, taken from the Old Testament, is elaborated above all by John in the fourth Gospel and by the author of  the book of Revelation.

In any case, there are no testimonies left to us of representations of the crucifix. Only in the fifth century, according to the testimonies that have come down to us, was that body represented. The oldest existing testimony today of an image of the crucifix is a panel of the wooden portal of the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome (422-432).[8] In simple and immediate language, rapid and sketchy, against a background entirely occupied by a description of the walls of Jerusalem, Christ on the cross is depicted, flanked by the two thieves. Christ’s loincloth is supported by a belt that wraps around his hips, hanging down at the front, in a manner that will later be taken up by Maestro Guglielmo in the Sarzana Cross (1138). The gestures of the three figures recall in a surprising way that of the praying person. From the same period there is a crucifixion, accompanied by the scene of the hanging of Judas, carved on the side of a small ivory reliquary in the British Museum. In both images, Jesus is shown alive and appears leaning against – rather than nailed to – the cross.

The representations of the cross that have come down to us in the two centuries that followed are few: depictions of the cross were deprived of the body of that man, and exalted in glory, as in Ravenna in Sant’Apollinare in Classe (5th century), where, to signify that it is the Christian cross, at the intersection of the two arms is placed a shield  containing the face of Christ.

In the following centuries, amidst increasingly bitter and conflictual iconoclastic voices, the Council of Trullo (692) is of fundamental importance. It decreed that Christ – “our God” – be represented not in the form of a lamb, but in human form: “In certain reproductions of sacred images the Precursor is depicted pointing with his finger to the lamb. This representation was taken as a symbol of grace. It was a hidden figure of that true lamb, which is Christ, our God, revealed to us according to the law. Having therefore received these figures and shadows as symbols of the truth transmitted by the Church, we now prefer grace and truth themselves as the fulfillment of this law. Therefore, in order to expound by the help of painting what is perfect, we decree that henceforth Christ, our God, be represented in his human form and not as the ancient lamb.”[9]

However, if it is possible to depict Christ in the form of a man, how should he be represented on the cross? It is difficult to understand if and how Christ crucified was depicted in this period (7th and 8th centuries), especially because of the violent iconoclastic measures adopted in 726 by the emperor Leo III Isauricus (675-741). They followed a few years after the edict of Caliph Yazid II (720-724), ordering the destruction of images in all Christian communities under his rule.

The crucifixion of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome

A splendid 8th-century testimony that has come down to us, the scene of the crucifixion in Santa Maria Antiqua (built in Rome between 741 and 751), nonetheless allows us to guess how Jesus on the cross could have been represented in such a turbulent and complex historical moment. Christ on the cross, between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, is represented alive and glorious. He wears a long tunic, showing none of the signs of suffering. His eyes, large and wide open, have a calm and serene look, and the wounds of the cross do not violate the integrity of his body; indeed, the torture of the cross seems to leave him impassive.

His arms are outstretched in a gesture of prayer, as if to embrace the whole of humanity. He is the glorious Christ, victor over death, the Christus triumphans. He is King and Lord of the universe, the tree of life, the beginning and end of all reality. This is the iconography of the royal, glorious Christ, in the double version of the Christ, clothed in a loincloth, and of Christ clothed in the long robe of the colobiu. Christ is thus revealed in his divinity.

The Council of Nicaea and the doctrine of images

In 787, at the sixth session of the Council of Nicaea, the doctrine of images was defined, but it was not definitively accepted until 843, thanks to a synod convened by the Empress Theodora and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Methodius. The representation of the cross, like other sacred images – those of Jesus Christ, of the holy Mother of God, or of the angels, the saints and the righteous – must be displayed in churches for the veneration of the faithful: “Proceeding on the royal path, following the divinely inspired doctrine of our holy fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church – we acknowledge, indeed, that the Holy Spirit dwells in it – we define with all rigor and care that, just as the depiction of the precious and life-giving cross, so the venerated and holy images, whether painted, or in mosaic, or in any other suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels, on sacred vestments, on walls and tables, in houses and streets; whether they be the image of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, or that of our most pure Lady, the holy Mother of God, of the holy angels, of all the saints and righteous. Indeed, the more frequently these images are contemplated, the more those who contemplate them are raised to the remembrance and desire of the original models and to pay them, by kissing them, respect and veneration. It is certainly not a matter of adoration, which our faith pays only to the divine nature, but of a worship similar to that which is rendered to the image of the precious and life-giving cross, to the holy Gospels and other sacred objects, honoring them with the offering of incense and lamps according to the pious custom of the ancients. The honor rendered to the image, in reality, belongs to the one who is represented in it, and the one who venerates the image, venerates the reality of the one  who is represented in it.”[10]

Christ in his humanity: from East to West

Although Christ crucified can once again  be depicted, it will take a long time for that man to be presented in his humanity. A question seems to arise: should Christ be represented in his divine nature or in his human nature? At the turn of the first and second millennium, a debate opened up whose consequences are still relevant today. We can see how in 1054, at the moment of the great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, the Western delegation – which placed the excommunication on the altar of Saint Sophia in Constantinople – challenged the East for having distanced itself from the tradition of depicting Christ on the cross alive, clothed and glorious, in order to represent the suffering Christ.

If the iconography of the suffering Christ was born in the East, it was the West, however, that developed the figure of the Christus patiens in the centuries that followed, leading to the realistic and at the same time disturbing representations that were produced in Europe in the Nordic and Mediterranean areas, especially in Spain. In particular, starting from the spirituality of the new mendicant Orders – Franciscans and Dominicans – the figure of Christ becomes increasingly human, bringing out how that man wept like us, agonized and suffered like us, and was in solidarity with us even unto death. Man will be able to confess his sin before the One who became “sin” in order to free him from death. Christ is no longer represented in glory, but through the pain of a man.

This change can be clearly seen in Giotto’s cycle of frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Assisi (1292-1305). In fact, the Tuscan artist depicts, in the scene of the prayer of San Damiano, the Saint of Assisi kneeling before a Christus triumphans – the Crucifix of San Damiano (1030-50) – but in the subsequent scene of the weeping of Clare and her companions over the body of the Saint before San Damiano, a Christus patiens appears, indicating a change not only from an iconographic point of view, but also and above all from a cultural and spiritual one. Christ is that man who, like us, was confronted with the mystery of death.

The Crucifix of Cimabue of Arezzo

The Crucifix by Cimabue of Arezzo (1268-71) is a good example of this tension between the  human and the divine, darkness and light. According to an iconography already documented in the East in the 10th and 11th centuries, in the 13th century, a new model of crucifixion also appeared in the West: Christ has his head reclined on his shoulder, his hands completely open, his knees bent, his eyes half-closed, then closed, his body improbably arched, in an undulating position at waist height, according to a position described as the “Byzantine curve.” He wears an elegant loincloth and appears as if suspended from the cross, rather than nailed to it. The nails are only hinted at, perhaps not even present, while streams of blood flow from the holes in the feet and hands.

Christ seems to be represented at the moment of dying and at the same time seems to be dancing. How is it possible, however, to hint at even a single dance movement on the cross, if the one  condemned to death can hardly move, being nailed to a stake? On the cross, as recounted in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, the Son of God prays Psalm 22, a psalm of sorrow: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” which continues, “Far from my salvation are the words of my cry! My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I find no rest” (Ps 22:2-3).

However, in the second part, the psalm changes into a song of praise, in which the psalmist says: “From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows” (Ps 22:25). In the depth of despair, the psalmist praises the God of life. Christ praises the Father because he has saved him.

So, in the crucifixion scene, there is no sign of suffering on the body of Jesus, so that the faithful, seeing him, can already glimpse the Risen One. To signify the Resurrection, the body of Christ becomes arched, it seems to dance. Dancing thus becomes an expression of salvation: the one who dances reveals how redemption comes true, becomes real, and expresses joy. His feet, placed side by side, seem as if ready to ascend to heaven, almost prefiguring the Ascension.

Dialectic between human and divine, between glory and kenosis

The dialectic between the divine and the human, between glory and kenosis, between theologia gloriae and theologia crucis will be constantly present in representations of the crucifixion until the 20th century. In this dialectic emerges the reflection on beauty,[11] which, following one strand of Greek philosophical tradition, is closely related to transcendence. Whether it is of a cosmological or theological order, beauty refers in fact to an original absolute, to a transcendent world, interpreted by Plotinus as the “house of the Father,” or by Augustine as the “heavenly homeland,” the final goal. Indeed, beginning with Augustine’s theology, Christianity will place God himself as the source of this harmony, the source from which all beauty springs.

In Christian reflection, the debate focuses on the figure of Christ, the revelation of the invisible God. The Son, “the radiance of his [God’s] glory” (cf. Heb 1:3), reveals beauty in God. Nevertheless, Christ’s beauty is confronted by the Passion and the Cross, capable of arousing horror and dismay: Christ, the most beautiful among the sons of man (cf. Ps 45), is crowned with thorns, scourged, dying in agony; he dies infamously crucified. How is it possible to reconcile apparently contradictory aspects, such as the extraordinary beauty of the Son of God and his being disfigured?

On the one hand, the Renaissance and Baroque traditions represent Christ in his glory, according to the categories of beauty, harmony and proportion borrowed from the Greco-Roman tradition. Christ is represented in the luminous beauty of his glory. The iconography of Christus triumphans, victor over death, is elaborated according to the principles of Italian naturalism. On the other hand, reflecting on the hymn to Christ in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the spiritual tradition interprets the beauty of Christ on the cross as splendor in kenosis, the emptying of his divinity, so that man may become divine.

Thus, in the Crucifixion of Matthias Grünewald in Isenheim, the beauty of the crucified is shown sub contraria specie, in its opposite sign. It is the mystery of the Deus absconditus, Luther would affirm; the mystery of a divinity that hides itself, Ignatius of Loyola would specify. On the cross, the form of Christ’s body appears deformed; the Christus patiens can thus present Himself in His atrocious ugliness.

It is not entirely true that it was Christianity that introduced pain and ugliness, as Hegel argues.[12] Greek culture itself, in fact, not only represents the ideal and imperturbable beauty of Phidias’ Olympic world, but also records the pain of the flayed Marsyas, the inconsolable pain of Oedipus, the tragic madness of Medea, and so on. However, it is only with Christianity that the “disfigured body” becomes the focus of a reflection that goes beyond the Greek vision of kalokagathia, that is, of the coincidence of the beautiful and the good, in order to inscribe the dimension of suffering and horror in the very life of God, in Christ, in the one who reveals beauty.

The Prince of Life confronts death. In the body of Christ on the cross every perfection is destroyed; it arouses disgust and repugnance, because it embodies the disfigurement of a flesh that becomes a living wound. On the cross, that body brings out the horror of one who is disfigured, of one who has suffered violence. God is here not in beautiful form, but deformed. It is the end of the glory of the form. But the form is disfigured to signify the excess of love, the gift that God gives of himself. In this sense, the sight of the Crucifix is true theoria, contemplation, supreme beauty. Beauty then becomes a process of humanization, authenticity and true witness. Beauty makes God’s holiness present and  active in history.

Body of Christ, body of Satan, beauty and ugliness

In reality, true ugliness presents itself in the form of Satan, the great seducer, the tempter, the one who divides. It is interesting to note how in the Christian tradition the iconography of Satan refers to the category of the hybrid, of disorder, of mixture, echoing the representations of Greco-Roman antiquity and elaborating some myths that feature living beings made up of the combination of animal elements taken from various species. Thus Satan, the personification of evil, horrible and horrifying, adopts animal and human elements, according to different iconographies: at times naked, blue, obese, with an enormous beard and horns; at other times with a feral, bestial face and features, covered with warts and purulent excrescences. In any case he appears as chaos, a perverted creature, frighteningly obscene, in which every order appears upset, subverted. An embodiment of  wickedness, of the gratuitousness of ugliness, of horror.[13]

In this sense, the figure of Christ and that of Satan are opposed to each other in a specular way. Two representations of a deformed form of the ugly, thus assume diametrically opposed meanings. While the body of Christ is the place of redemption, of a passage through death, that of Satan embodies perdition, eternal damnation. Christ’s body will be transfigured into a “glorious body,” into a luminous epiphany of divine glory, anticipated in the event of the Transfiguration; Satan’s body, on the other hand, is upside down, monstrous, terrible, for eternity. Satan is the perversion of the creative logos.

Beauty, an appeal to a gaze of light

The 20th century will meditate above all on the Christus patiens, the suffering body of that man becomes the place in which to discover the deepest meaning of life that opens up to the mystery of God. The figure of Christ on the cross becomes a point of reference for crossing the frontier of death. The atrocious ugliness of that body, the place of passage from darkness to the light of resurrection, invites us to reflect on the deepest meaning of human existence, in its openness to a beyond, to a transcendence. If that body is presented as the incarnation of evil, since, according to Jewish law, every man hanging on a stake  is cursed, it is to affirm life. Horror is staged so that we may know how to wait for glory. We experience the darkness, that the light may surprise us in its radiant splendor.

In this sense, the contemplation of the Cross is not meant to express a taste for the darkness of  Tenebrae, it is not meant to be a journey with no possibility of redemption, but it is meant to be a gaze of pietas and mercy before the pain of the world. In the body of that man, ethics and aesthetics are called to find each other and to join in the same desire to illuminate the life that opens itself to the embrace of God. Beauty then can become light projected onto the dramas of history, onto the lacerations and contradictions of daily life, so that it may be continually regenerated and recomposed in the truth of a beauty that transfigures and safeguards, achieving  dignity, freedom and love. If in Christ “interior light and exterior form” coincide,[14] that “wounded and risen body” becomes a passage toward the infinite beauty that awaits everyone at the end of time.

Beauty can thus become an “appeal,” bringing out the truth of a person’s encounter with the world and with God, a questioning of the deepest dimensions of the mystery of life, of the meaning of being born, suffering and dying. Beauty can welcome a space for reflection, becoming an expression of a meaning for human life continually to be explored, an inquiry into the inexhaustible sphere of a meaning to be sought, an openness to a God who calls us and awaits us. In the beauty of one face to contemplate.


DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 6, no.7 art. 3, 0722: 10.32009/22072446.0722.3

[1].      On this theme, cf. A. Dall’Asta, La croce e il volto. Percorsi tra arte, cinema e teologia, Milan, Àncora, 2022.

[2].      Cf. J. P. Hernández, Nel grembo della Trinità. L’immagine come teologia nel battistero più antico di Occidente. Napoli IV secolo, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2004, 120-122.

[3].       Justin, I Apologia, 60, 1.

[4].       Idem, at 60, 5.

[5].       G. de Champeaux – S. Sterckx, Introduction au monde des symboles, Paris, Zodiaque, 1989, 370.

[6].       H. Rahner, Miti greci nell’interpretazione cristiana, Bologna, il Mulino, 1971, 67.

[7].      “Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur et adorabitur in parietibus depingatur.”

[8].      Of the 28 sculpted panels, only 18 have survived.

[9].       Council in Trullo, can. 82.

[10].    Despite the solemn declarations of the Council of Nicaea, the iconoclastic struggle continued. It was not until March 843 that a synod convened by the Empress Theodora and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Methodius, definitively reintroduced the cult of images and instituted, to commemorate the event, the Feast of Orthodoxy, which is still celebrated today in the Eastern Church on the first Sunday of Lent. This feast commemorates the victory of iconodulia and the definitive confirmation of the Christology elaborated by the first six ecumenical Councils, which is the basis of icon veneration. Cf. Council of Nicaea II, Definition concerning sacred images.

 

[11].    Indeed, from an aesthetic point of view, Western culture is profoundly marked by Greek philosophy. Beauty, which arises as if from an abyssal chaos, presents itself as harmony, order, proportion, symmetry. For Pythagoras, through a system of numbers, beauty is revealed in the perfect articulation of the parts, according to a model that imitates the cosmological order of the celestial firmament. It is an objective beauty, based on the three transcendentals of beauty, truth and goodness. Beauty manifests itself as luminosity, as a thunderbolt: it is splendid to behold (cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 250 b-c);  it brings one out of oneself and is guided by eros, by a desire that makes us pass from perceptible beauty to the intelligible world, until it leads us to the vision of absolute beauty, the definitive and conclusive moment of authentic being, a sudden event, a gratuitous revelation, contemplation of the unity of the real, the immediate vision of thought (cf. Plato, Symposium 210 a-221c). The link between beauty, truth and goodness will be at the basis of the cosmic order and the revelation of beauty until the 20th century. From Greek to Roman forms, from Renaissance to neoclassical – except perhaps for the Baroque interlude, in search of new and unprecedented harmonic forms – the point of reference will be Greece, to which every epoch is linked, in the desire to relive in the present that mythical Golden Age that the classical world had embodied in all its splendor.

[12].    On this theme, cf. U. Eco, Storia della bruttezza, Milan, Bompiani, 2010.

[13].    Cf. A. Dall’Asta, Dio storia dell’uomo. Dalla Parola all’immagine, Padua, Messenger, 2013, 121-131.

[14].    Cf. Balthasar H. U. von, Gloria. Antico Patto, vol. VII, Milan, Jaca Book, 1980, 315.

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