This discussion of image, text, and visuality has some very particular applications to early Christianity. As has been the case with intellectualism in art generally, a fundamental assumption has been that early Christian images represent theological
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Figure 20.5 Wall painting of Orpheus and animals. 3rd century ad. Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome, Italy. Photo ©Held Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Statements and systems and that they exist to communicate those concepts to the viewer. They are traditionally interpreted by literal reference to Scripture, as if they could be no more than mere ‘‘illustrations’’ of a text. Certainly our current understanding of the fluidity of pre-Constantinian Christianity should make us cautious in using as a guide to interpretation a canon or theology that was developed later. More fundamentally, we should question the assumption that theologies must predominate in anything considered Christian. It is clear that philosophically minded apologists (among numerous other writers) were concerned with theology; but what of those believers comfortable with the society and culture of the empire - those who, for example, could afford painted tombs? Did they have clear, articulated, and strongly held theological concepts, ones that would exclusively distinguish them from their non-Christian fellows? A good number of images in Roman Christian catacombs and tombs seem to indicate they did not. Scholars have had perennial difficulty in explaining the frequent presence of Orpheus (fig. 20.5), Dionysiac imagery (fig. 20.6), and even Hercules and Athena (fig. 20.7) in ostensibly Christian burial chambers (examples in Grabar 1968; Murray 1981; Finney 1994; Jensen 2000). The frequently nonnarrative, staccato presentation and the multivalent or ambivalent symbolism of this art challenge a discursive method of interpretation. Since Christianity is a revealed religion, one with a divine authorizing text, it may be only common sense to read images in light of that text; but even so, did ‘‘read’’ and ‘‘text’’ mean the same thing for ancient Christians as they do for us (Gamble 1995: 30; Jensen 2000: 75-8)?
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Figure 20.6 Dionysiac mosaic in Santa Costanza. Rome, Italy. ©1990. Photo Scala, Florence.
As Ramsay MacMullen has pointed out, in a world in which three-quarters of the population were illiterate, the knowledge and spread of Christianity, indeed of any religion, could not have been a matter of reading, at least not in the way we commonly understand it (MacMullen 1984: 21 and n. 14). Harry Gamble states categorically that ‘‘nothing remotely like mass literacy existed, nor could have existed, in Greco-Roman societies, because the forces and institutions required to foster it were absent.’’ We cannot suppose that Christians differed in this respect from the general population, despite the importance of the revealed text, since ‘‘acquaintance with the scriptures did not require that all or even most Christians be individually capable of reading them and does not imply that they were’’ (Gamble 1995: 4-5, citing Harris 1989; see also Young 1997: 10-28; Haines-Eitzen 2000; Cribiore 2001). As Scripture itself indicates, Christianity was spread by preaching and, in its earliest period, bears more resemblance to an oral tradition or mythology than it does to our familiar form of literacy. The literary culture of antiquity was also itself profoundly oral in character. Authors wrote or dictated with an ear to the sound of their words and under the assumption that what they wrote would be audibly read both in public reading and in the ancient practice of reading aloud privately. As a result, ‘‘no ancient text is now read as it was intended to be unless it is also heard, that is, read aloud’’ (Gamble 1995: 204; see, for an example, August. Conf. 6. 3, though silent reading in antiquity was more common than has generally been thought: Burnyeat 1997; Gavrilov 1997). Hearing the text read aloud, particularly in the context of the liturgy, was the fundamental way in which all Christians appropriated
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Figure 20.7 Wall painting of Hercules and Athena. Left-hand arcosolium, cubiculum N, Via Latina Catacomb. 4th century ad. Rome, Italy.
Scripture, not only the illiterate. Reading literature aloud was also a frequent form of cultured entertainment among the educated.
This point merits further discussion. John R. Clarke has recently questioned the prevailing view of widespread illiteracy in the Roman world, citing as evidence the bawdy and often witty graffiti that accompany wall paintings in taverns in Pompeii and Ostia (Clarke 2003: 271). These were clearly lower-class establishments, and getting the joke painted on the walls required the ability to read. The mere existence of such paintings suggests that at least basic literacy was common enough. That this question is raised by an art historian in the context of wall paintings illustrates well the inextricable link between the visual and verbal, in that paintings might be able to tell us something about literacy; but it also points to something else. It is a modern prejudice to assume that once people could read, they would somehow abandon orality and visuality in favor of the textual and literal; that reading trumps all other modes of reception and comprehension. It is as if an ancient Christian who learned to read would, as a result, suddenly turn into Martin Luther. Just as the acquisition of reading does not entail the end of aural or visual perception and comprehension, neither does it necessitate the end of the primacy of the aural and visual. In both medicine and philosophy, the ‘‘living voice’’ of the teacher was considered superior to books as a vehicle for imparting knowledge (Cribriore 2001: 145-6). Literate and educated persons can be as aurally and visually oriented as those who cannot read. The issue is one of culture, not education.
Texts appropriated through hearing do not possess the fixity of those assimilated and conceptualized according to modern practices of reading. As Frances Young contends, the scriptural text was itself ‘‘symbolic’’ of a greater and higher reality. Understood ‘‘sacramentally,’’ Scripture was a ‘‘linguistic sign’’ that represented the reality to which it referred (Young 1997: 117-33). Similarly, Averil Cameron states: ‘‘Like visual art, early Christian discourse presented its audience with a series of images. The proclamation of the message was achieved by a technique of presenting the audience with a series ofimages through which it was thought possible to perceive an objective and higher truth’’ (Cameron 1991: 57). Given this understanding, we must be wary in establishing a literal, one-on-one correspondence between Christian images and Scripture. Robin Jensen draws the connection between this form of literacy and art:
This explains why certain subjects were so often portrayed in abbreviated or unexpected ways. The viewer had already moved beyond the literal meaning of the narrative to its deeper messages. Christians would see for themselves, in pictorial form, the interpretations or symbolic associations they were regularly hearing in their weekly homilies and their baptismal catecheses. (Jensen 2000: 78)
The sacred text, because it was assimilated aurally, lent itself to visuality. The Christians responsible for such works as the catacomb paintings did not use images merely to illustrate their texts; nor did they use texts to justify their images. Rather, both these modes of expression and communication were grounded in a common experience of visuality in which, as with the writers of the Second Sophistic, the distinction between word and image tends to break down.
We have already discussed Bordo’s concept of sympathetic understanding and Elsner’s of mystic viewing. I would suggest these have a parallel in a concept and institution developed in the early church that was as alien to modern culture as ancient visuality: sacrament. The sacraments are effective signs. They both symbolize and are what they symbolize at the same time: water and grace, oil and the Holy Spirit, bread and body, wine and blood. In a manner analogous to the icon in later eastern Christianity, sacraments are both of this world and a gate to another. The ability to see beyond material reality to the transcendent is operative not only in the sacraments but also in the transformation of classical biography into late antique hagiography, where the human subject of the verbal portrait is transformed into a symbol, a saint. This type of viewing can also allow the object to transform the viewer. In the Eucharist especially, the viewer unites with the object and, by ingesting bread, is subsumed into the body of Christ:
If mystic vision is the attainment of union with Christ beyond the distinction of subject and object, the eucharist is precisely the means by which such union may be achieved.
... By the late fifth century, the sacramental vision of Christian Neoplatonism revealed the liturgy and the eucharist to be operating in precisely the same way as sacred images. (Elsner 1995: 121)
Or, in the words of Robert Taft, Christian liturgy is a ‘‘living icon’’ (Taft 1997: 224). It also bears repeating that the liturgy was the privileged place for appropriating the Scriptures through oral reading, giving a sacramental, visual frame to the verbal revelation, which was understood sacramentally, as a verbal sign.
We can also suggest a further connection between images and the liturgy. Images decorate sacred spaces, places where religious actions are carried out - for example, burials in catacombs or worship in assembly halls. Images can reflect, enhance, or clarify the meaning of sacred acts. The images in the baptistery at Dura-Europos on the Parthian frontier (c. ad 230) present an example. Above the font as the centerpiece of the room is a large mural of the Good Shepherd, conveying incorporation into his flock, the congregation, and care in this life unto salvation in the next (fig. 20.8). The frequency of this same image in the catacombs would point to fulfillment of this commitment in death. Similarly with the mural of three women (fig. 20.9): this is usually taken to refer to the Resurrection - to portray, in other words, the women at the tomb - but its significance may lie instead in the movement of the women itself. They are processing to meet their Lord, an action parallel to that of the baptizands, and perhaps of the entire congregation, approaching the font. Physical action rather than abstract thought can be the impetus behind image making.
But the transcendent element of liturgy and sacrament, that which is perceived by ‘‘mystic viewing,’’ is only half the experience. Water, oil, bread, and wine remain visible and tangible; they do not disappear into the transcendent reality. If the eucharistic bread is not bread, it cannot be the body of Christ. The holy man and saint remain human; indeed, their sanctity would be meaningless if they were not human. What I would term ‘‘sacramental perception,’’ embracing seeing, reading, and hearing, requires that the material, mundane, and historical be seen at the same time with their corresponding higher realities. It is a visual mode of understanding that comprehends in terms of‘‘both and’’ instead of analyzing into ‘‘either or.’’ In her survey of fourth-century eucharistic instructions, Georgia Frank discusses the predominance of visual metaphors and concludes:
New experiences demanded new eyes. As this essay suggests, the ‘‘eyes of faith’’ stood for a variety of mental images and visual processes taught to new Christians as a way to receive the eucharistic bread and wine. Without erasing the evidence of the physical
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Figure 20.8 The Good Shepherd. Wall painting from Dura-Europos. 3rd century ad. Dura-Europos Collection. Yale University Art Gallery.
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Figure 20.9 Women at the Tomb(?). Wall painting from Dura-Europos. 3rd century ad. Dura-Europos Collection. Yale University Art Gallery.
Senses, these visual strategies generated a host of mental images that would reframe the physical reception of the Eucharist. Rather than look away, neophytes were asked to look closer at the liturgy unfolding. (Frank 2001: 621)
The broad dynamics of liturgy and sacrament and the visuality inherent in them is, I would suggest, characteristic of visual and verbal representation and perception in Late Antiquity.
World History
