Image Of Christ Research Articles

Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image. By Cornelia A.Tsakiridou. Pp. xiv, 362, Farnham/Burlington, Ashgate, 2013, £65.00.

Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image. By Cornelia A.Tsakiridou. Pp. xiv, 362, Farnham/Burlington, Ashgate, 2013, £65.00.

The Poet as a Saint: The Caxton Master’s Portrait of Ovid and Its Literary Background

The frontispiece of William Caxton’s Middle English translation of the Ovide moralise en prose in Cambridge, Magdalen College, Old Library, Ms. F.4.34, fol. 16r, shows Ovid as a Christian saint, praying to and receiving inspiration from an image of Christ. There is no similar picture in any other manuscript. However, the artist, who is usually referred to as the Caxton Master, could draw on a broad literary background: the text illustrated by him belongs to a group of sources from France, which offer Christian interpretations (the so-called moralisations) of the Metamorphoses. At the same time, the Caxton Master is rooted in a home-grown English classicism, which from 1300 onwards established Ovid as a major authority, as is evident by commentaries, sermons, and — most surprisingly — scholastics writings. This paper aims to shed light on this interaction of literature and art.

Liturgia jako obraz

Important for this article is to look at the liturgy from the perspective of its celebration. The celebration, i.e. the visible side of the liturgy, so the congregation and its external action (postures, gestures), liturgical space, vestments, paraments and the whole ars celebrandi , is the image of the liturgy invisible to the human eye, yet the image of this reality, which takes place inside the gathered people. The liturgical celebration is first and foremost the image of the cosmic liturgy. Christ, the Church, man, and with him the world, meet in the liturgy. Christ reveals Himself as Head of the Church and Lord of the entire universe. Man becomes a new icon of God, in the image of Christ, and the whole world regains in man the glory of God. All this contains an important message to persons responsible for the ars celebrandi and for the creation of liturgical space.

Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora (review)

Reviewed by: Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora Judith Collard (bio) Hemptinne, Thérèse de, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora, eds, Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, 2), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013; hardback; pp. xx, 311; 8 colour, 37 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503534206. This collection is the result of a Flemish–Chilean bilateral project, ‘Speaking to the Eye: Text, Image, and Gender in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times’. It is interdisciplinary in approach, but does emphasise literary, art historical, philosophical, and theological approaches. Each of the writers highlights the complex cultural meanings found in the texts and images being studied. The book is divided into three sections – Spiritual Vision, Text and Image Interactions, and Agency of Pictures – and is bookended by two essays that set the chronological boundaries of the work, and bring to the fore its central theme of exploring ‘the tension between iconophilic and iconoclastic reflections on the nature and function of images’ in the medieval and early modern periods. Ineke van ‘t Spijker’s chapter on Hugh of St-Victor and Richard of St-Victor looks at the important role given to the visual and the visible in their understandings of knowledge and thought. Both used images not only as explanatory diagrams but also as vehicles for thinking in their discussions of the thinking process. In their writings, where they reflect the influence of the writings of St Augustine, they provide a more nuanced role for imagery. While this chapter looks at how the Victorine brothers included roles for images and the imagination in their quest for spiritual perfection through contemplation and meditation, the next three deal with visionary texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, examining works by Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijck of Brabant, and Simon of Aulne. In their studies of the first two, María Eugenia Góngora and Veerle Fraeters take specific visionary texts for focused analysis, while Jeroen Deploige looks at the use of spiritual clairvoyance in an account of the life of a Cistercian lay brother. This was recorded in an illustrated revision of his life from the seventeenth century. Henry Suso also features in this collection. Suso’s use of images in his spiritual mentoring of nuns marked a shift in Dominican teaching, transforming Andachtsbilder into a central part of spiritual life. The imagery found in his texts also provides a fascinating insight into ideas about prayer and visionary experiences. Youri Desplenter examines Middle Dutch psalters, showing the use of these books by women, especially tertiaries, who adapted liturgical ritual into a quieter form of private prayer. The third chapter in this [End Page 240] second section looks at a fifteenth-century Middle French rhyming chronicle from the Premonstratensian monastery of Florette. The chronicle’s author defended the writing of history through allegorical writings combined with unusual illustrations, some of which transform and complement the meanings found in the text. The final section looks at paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These include the extraordinary Beato Chiarito tabernacle in Florence, the central panel of which shows an image of the Apostles drinking the blood of Christ via tubes. The image highlights both Christ’s suffering and the spiritual nourishment it provides. The second chapter, by Stijn Bussels, looks at the ‘Diptych of the Lentulus Letter’, which juxtaposes a profile image of Christ with a purportedly contemporaneous description of his appearance. Caroline van Eck’s final chapter on Bellini’s Pieta combines Alfred Gell’s ideas about agency in art with classical rhetoric and Renaissance responses to art, to explore early modern ideas about visual persuasion. The epilogue of the collection is a discussion of Huygen’s poem written to console a friend whose eyesight was diminishing, which draws together both Augustinian understandings of spiritual insight, with ideas drawn from texts like that of Thomas à Kempis. This is a fascinating and varied collection that tracks shifting understandings of the uses of images from the medieval...

An “Evolved” Devotional Book from Late-Eighteenth-Century Mexico

A well-used devotional book with two names inscribed and the print of a miraculous image of Christ crucified pasted in next to the first page of text is examined for clues to religious life in Mexico City in the late-eighteenth century. The discussion features a counterpoint between “external” baroque spiritual practices and reforms meant to fix attention on the discipline of private, “internal” exercises and atonement for sins that continues to be a source of scholarly debate.

The many faces of Christ: portraying the holy in the East and West, 300 to 1300

It is common to think of Jesus of Nazareth's main physical characteristics as including long, wavy, blondish hair and a short beard. Yet the Holy Scriptures are silent about Christ's features, and his representations are hardly consistent in early Christian and medieval arts. The wearing of long hair, moreover, is explicitly condemned by St Paul as shameful and effeminate: therefore it is surprising that, notwithstanding the Apostle's authoritative judgement, the long-haired archetype came to be accepted, as late as the ninth century, as the standard iconography of the Son of God. In The Many Faces of Christ Michele Bacci examines the complex historical and cultural dynamics underlying the making and final successful establishment of Christ's image between late antiquity and the early Renaissance. Unlike earlier studies, the process is described against the background of ancient and biblical conceptions of beauty and the physical look as indicators of moral, ascetic or messianic qualities. It takes into account a broad spectrum of both iconographic and textual sources, and also looks at analogous processes in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Taoist traditions. This book will be of interest not only to specialists of late antique, Byzantine and medieval studies, but to anybody interested in the historical figure of Jesus and its shifting, controversial conceptions over the course of history.

¿Cristo o diablo?: la contradictoria dualidad simbólica del león en el episodio de Daniel en el foso en la escultura románica

El león es un animal al que el hombre le ha atribuido múltiples sentidos, en ocasiones contradictorios. Se ha asociado a la imagen de Cristo, así como a la del diablo; a la idea de muerte, pero también a la de Resurrección. En el episodio de Daniel en el foso de los leones en el románico esta polivalencia simbólica alcanza su mayor nivel de desarrollo pues, frente a la habitual relación unívoca entre significante y significado, se produce la paradoja de que en una misma escena los leones asumen un significado ambivalente y contradictorio al representar al mismo tiempo a Cristo y al diablo. En este estudio se profundiza en esta lectura ambivalente y simultanea, la cual se trata de explicar desde la perspectiva de la lectura tipológica de las Escrituras.

Media portrayals of religion and the secular sacred: representation and change

Is it true that Christianity is being marginalised by the secular media, at the expense of Islam? Are the mass media Islamophobic? Is atheism on the rise in media coverage? Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred explores such questions and argues that television and newspapers remain key sources of popular information about religion. They are particularly significant at a time when religious participation in Europe is declining yet the public visibility and influence of religions seems to be increasing. Based on extensive research conducted on British mainstream media coverage of religion, the book is set in the context of wider debates about the sociology of religion and media representation. This book opens by laying out the key issues in global perspective. Using research conducted in the 1980s and 2008-10, the authors examine British media coverage and representation of religion and contemporary secular beliefs and values, and consider what has changed in the last 25 years. Exploring the portrayal of Christianity and public life, Islam and religious diversity, atheism and secularism, and popular beliefs and practices, several media events are also examined in detail: the Papal visit to the UK in 2010 and the ban of the controversial Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, in 2009. Questions arise about the media image of Christianity, how atheist and secularist demands on freedom of speech and equality are treated, and whether the media is anti-Islamic. Religion is shown to be deeply embedded in the language and images of the media, and present in all types of media coverage from news and documentaries to entertainment, sports reporting and advertising. A final chapter engages British findings with wider global debates about religion and media.

Richard Harries, The Image of Christ in Modern Art

Richard Harries, <i>The Image of Christ in Modern Art</i>

La naissance d’une légende : Juifs et finance dans l’imaginaire bordelais du XVII e siècle

This article examines the emergence of a new legend about the alleged Jewish invention of bills of exchange and marine insurance, the two most important financial instruments of commercial capitalism in late medieval Europe, which appeared in print for the first time in a commentary of maritime law published in Bordeaux in 1647. It shows how old tropes about Jews and usury were re-elaborated to give voice to new anxieties about the expansion of credit, and of paper credit in particular. In so doing, it argues for the importance of combining inter-textual with historical analysis in order to understand both the persistence and the transformation of Christian images of Jews.

God-language in Public and Private Prayer: A Place for Integrating Gender, Sexuality and Faith

Drawing on feminist liturgical critiques of prayer, Audre Lorde's notion of the erotic and Carter Heyward's relational theology, amongst other feminist, Womanist, Black and queer sources, this article proposes that prayer via gendered and erotic images of God and Christ may be a site for the integration of gender, sexuality and faith — not only in the life of the individual but in the wider body politic. The notion of integration is problematized alongside heteropatriarchal practices of prayer, and an eschatological understanding of prayer and identity offered. The article argues for prayer which engages with a multiplicity of embodied, erotic and queer images of God (and particularly Christ), as necessary to the complex work of personal and political integration with which prayer is charged as well as gesturing towards the fullness and mystery of God who both inhabits and transcends the limitations of metaphorical discourse about the divine.

La pintura de la Sagrada Familia. Un manual de relaciones familiares en el mundo de la Santafé del siglo xvii

This article is aimed at evaluating the discourse in paintings of the Holy Family made in the seventeenth-century Santa Fe. From the analysis of this set of images it is demonstrated the use of painting by the Catholic Church as a tool to configure an articulated society from families ruled by principles such as piety, chastity and mortification. The analysis is directly related to the problem of building a colonial subject whose physicality is modeled after the images of Christ, the Virgin or the saints.

Ambiguedad de la imagen en la cristianización del Perú: trento, los jesuitas y el tercer concilio

En el contexto de la contrarreforma católica y de la consolidación de la colonización andina, se examina el uso misionero de las imágenes cristianas y las ambigüedades de su adopción e interpretación. El tema es enfocado a partir de la llegada de los jesuitas y, luego, bajo las directrices emanadas del tercer Concilio Limense. El autor se introduce, de esta forma, en uno de los temas más sugestivos de la historia colonial peruana: el proceso de cristianización en los siglos XVI y XVII.

Book Review: Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination

Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination. By Linda Freedman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-107-00617-1. Pp. x + 210. $90.00. In the past decade there has been a small resurgence of interest in the part that Christian theology plays in the thinking and writing of the major poets of nineteenth-century America. In Emerson (2003), Lawrence Buell writes: it or not, there's no getting rid of religion as a force in affairs. If you think it's nothing more than the opiate of others, you're likely to misunderstand yourself as well as them. Especially if you're trying to come to terms with so religio-centric a culture as the United States was in the early nineteenth-century--and indeed still (Buell 159-60). it comes to Dickinson studies, however, the conversation about religion and theology is fraught with caveats and uncertainties. This is due, in part, to Dickinson's own attestations of unbelief, none more famous, perhaps, than wry poem about staying home from church (to the frustration of father): Some keep the Sabbath going to Church--/I keep it staying home-- (Dickinson 106). More seriously, as a girl Dickinson refused both baptism and the chance to profess faith in front of school. In light of these various attestations, she has been recently praised by Helen Vendler (Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries 2010) for her defiant critique of Christianity and uninhibited scrutiny of its concepts [which was] unequalled among the other poets of day (17). All this may lead the reader of Dickinson criticism to believe that the primary way in which Christian theology affected the poet was negatively. She can emerge--especially from Vendler's readings--looking like an anti-Christian poet. How refreshing it is, then, to find Linda Freedman engaging with the biblical and theological elements of Dickinson's verse and thought, especially those elements that are not explicitly anti-Christian. Freedman begins by taking seriously the Puritan heritage and atmosphere of the Amherst in which Dickinson grew up, steeped as it was with the thought of the orthodox Puritan Jonathan Edwards and emerging liberal, Unitarian tradition of William Channing. Whereas critics like Vendler have emphasized those aspects of Dickinson's thought that fall in line with Channing's criticisms of Edwardian Puritanism, Freedman argues that Dickinson shares with Edwards a belief in the religious power of language: Though Dickinson repeatedly cast ironic eye on the Puritan preoccupation with sin, she was fascinated from an extremely early age by the role of language in affective religion.... Like Edwards, Dickinson was aware of the problems of false conversion and insincere emotion. Her strong skepticism may well have been why she was able to remain an enthusiastic observer (rather than an enthusiastic participant) of the Visible Church in the years when she still attended. Like Edwards she turned to the authenticity of embodied experience in order to negotiate the problem of falsity. (24, 26-27) This concern with embodied experience that Dickinson shares with Edwards becomes for Freedman a guide through the oeuvre of the poet. Revealing Dickinson's deeply biblical imagination, Freedman sees the prime example of embodied experience in Dickinson's poetry, time and again, in images of Christ. It is Christology--especially Puritan Christology--that provides us with a key to reading Dickinson's poems that feature Christ: When Dickinson invoked Christ's body, she did so in full awareness of its importance to the theological claims that Christ was not only human (28). A little later she clarifies that Dickinson makes the Puritan God-man rather than the Emersonian man-God a stronger basis for poetic imitatio (30). Further, it is not, according to Freedman, merely the nature or the divine nature of Christ that fascinates Dickinson, but rather the hypostatic union of the two natures. …

Visualizing the Passion in Andrés de Li’s Summa de paciencia

In 1505, Jorge Coci reprinted in Zaragoza Andrés de Li’s Summa de paciencia . Its sole pictorial element is a single, full-page image of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, also known as the Imago pietatis . This essay explores how this image is actualized through the technologies of reading and visualization. Unlike previous studies of Summa de paciencia , this article will study how Andrés de Li incorporated Passion-centered devotional techniques into his treatise on the virtue of Christian Patience. This type of Christocentric spirituality did not play a major role in most medieval treatises on Patience, where the emphasis is traditionally on exemplary sufferance by individuals facing adversity. The distinctiveness of Li’s text resides in its incorporation of Passion-centered techniques within the framework of an exploration of the virtue of Patience. Further, through the medium of print Li and his printer offered laypeople “ways of seeing” their faith through devotional activities focused on the suffering Christ.

Narratives used to portray in-group terrorists: A comparative analysis of the Israeli and Norwegian press

Studies of US and UK media reveal that the press adheres to a dichotomous religion-based us/them worldview that portrays Muslims as terrorists but ‘repairs’ the image of Jews and Christians as criminals, creating concerns that the Western media promotes a clash-of-civilizations thinking pattern. To examine whether this pattern is representative of other Western democracies, the authors analyzed Israeli press coverage of Jewish settlers’ attacks against Palestinians ( N = 134) and Norwegian press coverage of Anders Breivik’s 2011 attacks ( N = 223). Content analysis reveals that the Israeli and Norwegian media labeled all the perpetrators ‘terrorists’, the attacks ‘terror’, and the motivation as ‘ideology’ rather than solely mental. The perpetrators – all subscribing to right-wing ideology – were not vindicated despite being Jewish or Christian. Beyond weakening the clash-of-civilizations notion that terrorism discourse in the West is necessarily religion-related, the findings highlight that the US press was ironically more eager than the Israeli media to ‘repair’ the image of Jewish perpetrators. The authors discuss the implications of our findings and suggest directions for future studies of biases in terrorism discourse.

Que disent les images bibliques de l’identité chrétienne, aux IIIe et IVe siècles ?

Research on the early Christian images have often responded to the need to identify Christian community through art, in roman society. In the catacombs, on sarcophagi or objects of domestic life, the development of a biblical iconography is the field of a double investigation: First, to identify the social level of Christian artistic patronage, and, secondly, to clarify the meaning of some iconographic choices within Christian culture. The question of religious identity is central in historiography on the early Christian images, but the significance of this notion of identity is also correlated with the methods of art historians and their perspective on their subject. Since the 90s, a shift occurs on this topic and it is now possible to reformulate some statements: is the notion of «identity» relevant to understand the first biblical pictures? Some images belonging to the period of cultural and iconographic transition, during IIIrd and IVth centuries, as Jonah’s, can now be thought outside of categories strictly depending on religious identity.

Protecting Her Image

In the panel article "Beautiful Babies, Hidden Mothers, and Plasticized Prisoners: The Display of Bodies and Theories of American Religion," this paper delves into a study of how the mid-twentieth-century “Miracle Woman,” the televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, used popular media--first radio and then television--to control her own image. The panelist argues that Kuhlman’s deft utilization of television, in particular, enabled her not only to control her own image but also to change the image of charismatic Christianity for postwar American audiences. In addition to crafting an image of herself and charismatic Christianity, Kuhlman also mastered the discourse of elision in order to subordinate her very visible, very feminine body. As a female religious leader, Kuhlman had to contend with the practice of self-negation expected by women in many conservative Christian groups in order to gain any significant degree of power. In other words, Kuhlman had to “disappear” or “die” in order to be a vessel for the Holy Spirit if she was to maintain authority. As an embodied female she could not lead without first subordinating, even denying, her own very visible body.

Jesus as ‘The One who Entered his Rest’: The Christological Reading of Hebrews 4.10

This article argues that in Heb. 4.10 the substantival aorist participle ὁ εἰσελθών should be translated ‘the one who entered’, and that its implied subject is Christ; it further suggests that, understood this way, this verse coheres with Hebrews’ strong emphasis on the completed nature of Christ’s salvific work, expressed in particular with the image of Christ’s enthronement or session using Ps. 110.1. The article thus challenges the view that the rest motif in Heb. 3–4 is purely a ‘sermon illustration’ with no connection to the strong Christology pervading the rest of the letter; additionally it underscores the creativity with which the author expresses the sufficiency of the Christ event, and strengthens the proximity of the motifs of entering rest and entering the heavenly sanctuary.

Carbon Dating the Image of Apo Santo Cristo de Lubao: From Oral History to Scientific Inquiry

Oral history is important in preserving significant milestones in humanexperience. This scientific research was conducted to identify the age of the holyCrucifix using radiocarbon dating method. Specifically, it aims to carry out thestudy by identifying the age of the sacred Cross of the Crucified Image of Christthrough radiocarbon dating procedures, and to provide scientific information tothe people vis-à-vis results of the carbon dating analysis. Based on the findings ofthe study, radiocarbon dating analyses showed that Beta-316804 (The WoodenCross) indicated a measured radiocarbon age Cal AD 1650 to 1690 (Cal BP 300to 260) compared to Beta-316805 (Image of Christ) Cal AD 1680 to 1730 (Cal BP 270 to 220) as identified by Beta Analytic Incorporated in 2012. Results showthat at 2-sigma statistics (95% probability), 2 dates yielded overlapping ranges,indicating that the results are statistically identical. Analyses of samples indicatedthat samples came from the same tree. Beta-316804 (The Wooden Cross) is slightly older than Beta-316805 (Christ’s Image). In conclusion, the study revealed the proximity of the radiocarbon dating analyses to the traditional accounts of thepeople of Lubao, Pampanga. Considering the highly sensitive nature of analyticalchemistry apparatuses, the time ranges (ages) drawn from the chemical analyseswere closely proximate to the dates asserted by oral accounts of the place. The results reveal the antiquity of the Crucifix (Cross and Image of Christ). The resultsvalidated the customary and traditional social and religious norms of the peopleas regards their reverence and devotion to the Crucifix even in this contemporarymilieu.Keywords: Social Sciences, oral history, religious artifact, image, Apo Sto Cristo, radiocarbondating, Philippines