Visual Metaphor as Theology: Leo the Great's Sermons on the Incarnation and the Arch Mosaics at S. Maria Maggiore

Abstract

The 5th-century S. Maria Maggiore mosaics have prompted a number of iconographic interpretations, most based on the view that they are textual illustrations. I propose to consider two particularly problematic scenes as visual metaphors for the 5th century pastoral theology set forth by Leo I in his sermons for the Nativity and Epiphany. Leo's theology of the hypostatic union proclaims Christ to be both divine and human, Son of God and son of David, conceived and born of a Virgin from the royal Davidic line. The Virgin of the Annunciation is crucial in establishing this: hence her prominence in Leo's sermons, and her prominence as the woman in gold in the panel that should be identified as an Annunciation. Leo's Epiphany sermons indicate the theological necessity for linking the Herod and Christ-in-Egypt pericopes so as to demonstrate the defeat of paganism through the recognition by the Egyptians, paradigmatic people of error, of Christ's universal rule. The panel, whose identification as a Flight int...