A Christian Moses in the Transfiguration Mosaics Created during the Reign of Justinian

Abstract

This essay examines various aspects of how Moses was represented as a Christian in artistic depictions of the Transfiguration produced during Justinian’s reign (527–565), particularly discussing mosaics in the apses of the Church of Sant’Apollinare and St. Catherine’s Monastery. First, this essay demonstrates the existence of an earlier type of the Metamorphosis, the St. Sabina-Brescia Lipsanotheca type. Second, this essay focuses on the exegetical tradition of the Transfiguration, which, until the first half of the fourth century, was relatively mild, but was later aggravated by Christian writers during the Theodosian Dynasty. Ultimately, a new type of Transfiguration was created, of which the central theme was the creation of a Christian Moses. The motivation behind this new type was the contradiction attributable to Maximian, the archbishop of Ravenna, the contradiction between his typological iconography visualized in the sanctuary of the Church of San Vitale and Justinian’s severe persecution against the Jews. This contradiction was dissolved through the creation of an image of a Christian Moses in the Transfiguration mosaics in the apses of Sant’Apollinare.