The Authority of the Word

by Brusati, Celeste; Enenkel, Karl A. E.; Melion, Walter S.

• ISBN13: 9789004215153
• ISBN10: 9004215158
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-01
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub

Summary

Scripture, authority, word and image, hermeneutics, visual exegesis

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION: SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY IN WORD AND IMAGEThe third Lovis Corinth Colloquium, convened at Emory University in October 2009, provided the initial forum within which the historians of art, literature, and religion, whose revised papers make up this book, were invited to consider the mutual form and function, manner and meaning of texts and images, as these were conceived and deployed in Northern Europe between 1400 and 1700. Implicit in the titular epigraph, #145;Authority of the Word#146;, is a reference to scriptural authority and to the textual instruments--the Bible and its commentaries--that mediated access to the divine word, making it discernible and apprehensible. In early modern Europe, visual images served likewise as enabling instruments that fostered colloquy between God and men, making divine providence intelligible to human knowledge. Like texts, images partook of rhetorical forms and hermeneutic functions--typological, paraphrastic, parabolic, among others--based largely in illustrative traditions of biblical commentary. In the sixteenth century, the introduction of the emblem and its text-image apparatus further complicated the theory and practice of scriptural image-making. If the specific relation between biblical texts and images exemplified the range of possible relations between texts and images more generally, it also operated in tandem with other discursive paradigms--scribal, humanistic, antiquarian, historical, and literary, to name but a few--for the connection, complementary or otherwise, between verbal and visual media. These alternative discourses provided further lenses through which textual and pictorial practices of invention and interpretation were viewed. In this volume of Intersections, the dynamic interaction between scriptural image and scriptural text also supplies the secundum comparatum, to which other kinds of relation between image and text are implicitly compared. The authors consider various types of text-image apparatus, asking how they were employed to represent, and by representing to constitute authority, both sacred and secular. By way of introduction, we want here to examine three pictures that incorporate sacred texts, composing words and images into templates for the possible relations between visual and verbal methods of scriptural interpretation. All three case-studies comment reflexively upon the nature of this relationship, which they also serve to exemplify. Printed images function as agents of the soul#146;s conformation to Christ in Willem van Branteghem#146;s celebrated Gospel harmony, the Iesu Christi vita, iuxta quatuor Evangelistarum narrationes of 1537 [Fig. 1]. The full title highlights the importance of pictorial images to the book#146;s form and function: The Life of Jesus Christ Skillfully Portrayed in Most Elegant Pictures Drawn from the Narratives of the Four Evangelists. Lieven de Witte of Ghent designed and perhaps also executed the 186 oblong woodcuts that punctuate the Iesu Christi vita, generally as head-pieces taking up a third of the page. Many of these prints are self-referential, in that they call attention to the use of visual images by Christ himself, who is seen to wield them as didactic tools for instilling evangelical doctrine. Plate 25, for example, illustrates John 3: 1-21, Jesus#146;s nighttime conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, whom He teaches about the kingdom of God, soon to be made visible to the eyes of faith: just as the brazen serpent was lifted up by Moses, that the Israelites might look at it and be healed, so the Son of Man, the only begotten Son of God, shall be lifted up, that they who see Him and believe may not perish but have life everlasting [Fig. 2]. De Witte ingeniously illustrates this visual analogy, showing how Jesus relies upon a pictorial image to analogize Himself, as living antitype, to the brazen serpent, a merely graven image. Nicodemus sits with Christ, who gestures toward the painting, displayed on the house altar at the right. That He faces a picture of Numbers 21:9 indicates that this scriptural source forms the basis of the homily He is delivering; that the biblical scene appears as an image in the image underscores its status as an analogical typus--figurative image--tendered to clarify the doctrine that supersedes it. The plate is of course meant to be viewed in conjunction with the biblical text it construes rather than merely illustrating. Indeed, author and artist together invite reflection on the nature and significance of scriptural images, given that Christ, here and elsewhere, authorizes their exegetical usage. In this and other ways, the book marshals text and image in tandem to constitute itself as a meditative machina (apparatus), that prompts the reader-viewer to reform himself on the model of Jesus#146;s person, words, and deeds, to be discerned and imitated by the votary who engages visually and verbally with the scriptural pericopes.Composed by De Witte, the figured title page of the Iesu Christi vita expounds 2 Corinthians 3, an excerpt from which -- #145;Litera occidit spiritus autem vivificat#146; -- surmounts the woodcut print [Fig. 1]. The bipartite image consists of two scenes divided by the titular plaque that prominently displays the Holy Name and refers to the Gospels and Epistles enshrining the life of Christ (Iesu Christi vita, iuxta quatuor Evangelistarum narrations [...]): at left Moses, the splendor of his face veiled, promulgates the tablets of the Law; at right the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, unveil a cloth miraculously imprinted with the Holy Face surrounded by the words, #145;When they shall have turned to the Lord, the veil will be lifted#146; (#145;Ubi conversi fuerint ad Dominum tolletur velamen#146;). These words, like the apostolic act of unveiling, encapsulate the argument of 2 Corinthians 3, their truth revealed and verified by the divinely radiant face they enframe. Whereas the Israelites shield their eyes from the awesome sight of the Law and its illustrious messenger, the Christian faithful behold the image of God are irradiated by the light of the Spirit that imbues them with luminous haloes. The two scenes illustrate the antithesis between the Old Law and the New, while the life, deeds, and doctrine of Christ, invoked and inscribed in the title, demarcate the threshold between these dispensations. If the title page visualizes the meaning of 2 Corinthian 3, it does so to justify the role played by pictorial images throughout Van Branteghem#146;s Gospel harmony. The titular print is exegetical in form and function, for it invites a specific reading of 2 Corinthians 3, verses 2 to 18 in particular, interpreting them as an argument for the dispensation of grace that licenses images under the sanction of the Holy Face. Fashioned by Christ, unfurled by the apostles, and beheld by the votary, this icon justifies production of further images of Christ, to be found throughout the Iesu Christi vita. The process of visualization, thus warranted, is seen implicitly to originate in the mystery of the Incarnation that converts Israelites who fear to behold into Christians who stare perspicaciously, the veil that covers into the veil that reveals the light of God. Moreover, the freedom of looking into the divine face both stands for and exemplifies the new liberty granted by Christ according to 2 Corinthians 3: 17: #145;And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty#146;. This liberty is equated with the franchise of viewing the #145;life of Jesus Christ skillfully portrayed in most elegant pictures#146;, and conversely, this franchise redounds upon Scripture, influencing the reading of the vita Iesu Christi enshrined in the Gospels and Epistles: which is to say that images are presented as instruments in and through which the votary#146;s engagement with Scripture transits, complementary to the hermeneutics of scriptural reading. Accordin