Devotion: Paradise Restored
The story of Adam and Eve, as depicted in the windows at Chartres, acted as the foundational story for medieval spirituality. In the Old Testament book of Genesis, God created Adam and Eve and gave them a home in paradise, the Garden of Eden. God asked but one thing of them: not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But, tempted by the serpent, Adam and Eve ate. As punishment for their sin, God banished them from paradise. Absent God, the world devolved into a tragedy of pride, violence, and sin. Thus began the long human quest to regain paradise, to somehow find a way back to God's presence. Medieval spirituality was marked by its sense of exile and longing to return as Christians sought holy reunion with God in this life with hope for the next.
Sacred Journey
My first course in medieval religious history was taught by Professor Eleanor McLaughlin, a noted scholar of both spirituality and women's history. One morning, with the day's topic posted as "Celtic Christianity," Professor McLaughlin walked into the classroom, paying scant attention to her students, and pretended to light a fire. As she knelt on the floor, she explained, "Celtic households began the day by blessing the fire." Her hands moved gracefully around the imaginary embers as she recited an ancient Irish prayer. "Celtic spirituality melded Irish folk ways and Christianity," she said. "It enfolded nature and grace, a kind of nature mysticism, in a pagan and Christian synthesis." She recited the legend of Patrick coming to Ireland, the birthplace of Celtic Christianity. As it happened, Patrick landed on Easter eve, and he lit a Pascal fire that lighted up an entire hillside. The wizards who counseled the High King warned that if Patrick's fire were not put out by dawn, "it will not be quenched till doomsday" and that the one who kindled it "will vanquish the kings and lords of Ireland." Wizards tried to extinguish Patrick's flame, but their powers failed and many converted to Christianity. From this mythical beginning a Celtic version of Christianity -- one distinct from the traditions of the Roman Church -- dominated Ireland. "Their learning, art, and song were placed in wholehearted service of God and the Church," one historian noted. "Nothing was done by halves." Professor McLaughlin said it was a fire that could not be quenched. This "wall of holy fire" swept across Europe. The Celts, inveterate wanderers, could not sit still. Years before Gregory the Great conceived of missions as politically advantageous, Celtic Christians set out on journeys as a practice of faith. They did not invent the practice of pilgrimage. Rather, the Celts defined the whole of the Christian life as a sacred journey. "God counseled Abraham," wrote Columba (ca. 521-597), "to leave his own country and go on pilgrimage to the land which God has shown him.... Now the good counsel which God enjoined here on the father of the faithful is incumbent on all the faithful; that is to leave their country and their land, their wealth and their worldly delight for the sake of the Lord of the Elements, and go in perfect pilgrimage in imitation of him." The Voyage of Brendan records the legend of a navigator, Brendan (484-577 or 583), who sets out to find "the island which is called the Promised Land of the Saints." The Voyage recounts how Brendan and his companions sailed for seven years, encountering all manner of angels and demons in nature's beauty and fearful storms, in miraculous adventures that tested the pilgrims' faithfulness. It took so long, as Brendan learns at the end of the journey, because "God wished to show you his many wonders in the great ocean." When they arrived, they discovered "open land stretching out before them covered with trees laden with autumnal fruit," where night never fell and a wide river flowed through the center of the island. An angel greeted Brendan and his crew, instructing them to load their boats with fruits and gems before sending them home to their waiting friends. The Voyage was widely popular in written, oral, and pictorial forms through the Middle Ages, and it was translated into many European languages. It served as both an exciting tale and an extended metaphor for the Christian life.
Unlike early Christians, who made pilgrimage to specific locations associated with Christ or the saints, Celts tended toward no particular destination -- except the "Island of Paradise." On this quest they wandered across the seas; they wandered on land. Occasionally they stopped to set up a cross, some huts, and a small monastic community. But then they started to wander again. Theirs was a vagrant life for Christ, a self-imposed exile from their beloved homeland to find a new way of being in God. As a chronicler from 891 wrote of three Irish strangers who arrived in Cornwall, "They wanted to go into exile for the love of God, they cared not whither." Celts took the story of Jesus with them to places like Scotland, the north of England, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and Germany. They wandered not for the sake of their own souls but for the sake of others as well, converting many pagan tribes to Christianity. As the missionary Columbanus (d. 615) wrote to a friend, "You know I love the salvation of many and seclusion for myself, the one for the progress of the Lord, that is, of His Church, the other for my own desire." Celtic sacred journey strengthened both the inner spiritual life and the outer life of the church by forming Christian communities. As such, Celtic pilgrimage embodied Jesus's mission to be a faith community in the world.
Eventually Celtic pilgrims encountered Roman monks and their genius for organization, a meeting that did not augur well for the less precise Celts. The Celtic church and the Roman one disagreed -- among other things -- over the date of Easter, the authority of the pope, and styles for monastic haircuts. Although the Celts lost on all these issues in a church council in 664, their spiritual fervor quietly strengthened the new Roman church in England. In this crucible of pilgrimage and institution, Western Christianity was reborn. Or, as Professor McLaughlin said, Celtic spirituality became "the life-giver of the structure, the fire in the hearth of faith." And throughout the Middle Ages, whenever the power of the institution threatened to overwhelm the heat of faith, pilgrimage continued to be a life-giving path for Christians who heeded the call to spiritual exile.
Icons
Protestant churches tend toward being plain. White or light blue walls, clear or inexpensive colored windows, red or gold carpet, and a simple cross or two constitute most spiritual decor of American congregations. In Sunday school classrooms hang discreet pictures of Jesus and some historical scenes of the Holy Land. Such simplicity comes from the fact that Protestants, unlike Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, believe that statues and paintings distract attention away from the Bible and sermon. Words of scripture and acts of goodness reveal God, not art.
Christians have been arguing for quite a long time about visual representation of God. In 600 Bishop Serenus of Marseilles destroyed all the pictures in every church in his city.
Apparently the bishop felt that "images somehow cheapened the sacred words of Scripture." When Pope Gregory the Great heard of Serenus's action, he chastised the bishop: It is one thing to worship a painting, and quite another to learn from a scene represented in a painting what ought to be worshiped. For what writing provides for people who read, paintings provide for the illiterate who look at them, since these unlearned people see what they must imitate; paintings are books for those who do not know their letters, so that they take the place of books especially specifically among pagans.
Although Gregory stated the principle clearly enough, it did not stop icons from becoming one of the most controversial issues in the medieval church.
In 726 the Eastern emperor, Leo III, outlawed the use of icons and ordered their destruction. Up to that time, icons had not been the sole possession of saints, monks, and theologians. Ancient churches invited the laity to "enter an alternative world." There, in cool silence, worshipers were greeted by "the legions of saints -- painted on the walls or captured on wooden panels.... Staring straight ahead, they waited the supplicant's entreaty, through which they would become animated. At that moment the martyrs of the past mingled with the faithful, blurring the line between the perceptible and that which is beyond human cognition." Lay Christians were accustomed to using icons in public worship and private devotion, and it was assumed that the laity received benefit in healing and spiritual vision through praying with them. Holy images formed devotion throughout Eastern Christianity, opening the vision of paradise for all. Upon Leo's decree to ban them, mass rioting broke out across the empire. The Christian poor revolted. Not even the emperor could close the window to heaven.
A series of edicts and counteredicts from successive popes and emperors further divided the church between iconoclasts (destroyers of images) and iconodules (worshipers of images). Elite Christians, whose piety was based on words and the Roman love of rhetoric, wanted to eliminate icons for fear that illiterate masses might take over the church. Complicating the class issue was the emergence of Islam in the East, with its strict prohibition against images of every sort. Leaders hoped to mute Islam's challenge to the faith by curbing the abuse of icons among lower classes. Eventually, in 780, the empress Irene ended the conflict and restored icons to the churches. But theological questions remained. She called an ecumenical council to resolve the problems.
The council drew largely from the work of John of Damascus (ca. 655-750). Ironically, John, the defender of icons, lived in the Muslim city of Damascus, where he served as chief councilor to the caliph. The caliph, despite his own distaste for representative art, protected John against several attempts by Christian partisans to have the theologian arrested or killed.
John addressed the issue rather simply. What is an image? "An image is a likeness and representation of some one," John argued, "containing in itself the person who is imaged. The image is not wont to be an exact reproduction of the original. The image is one thing, the person represented another." Thus, having made a distinction between the image and the thing, John explained the purpose of images. "Every image is a revelation and representation of something hidden," he stated. Human beings have limited knowledge; therefore images aid in our capacity to experience what is beyond time and space: "The image was devised for greater knowledge, and for the manifestation and popularizing of secret things." For Christians this is "a pure benefit and help to salvation, so that by showing things and making them known, we may arrive at the hidden ones, desire and emulate what is good, shun and hate what is evil."
John attacked the charge that iconodules committed idolatry by claiming, "Icons are not idols but symbols." When a Christian venerated an icon (used the icon in worship), John insisted that the act did not constitute worship of the image. "We do not make obeisance to the nature of wood, but we revere and do obeisance to Him who was crucified on the Cross." Christ himself is an image, his human nature a reflection of the invisible divine nature. John believed that based on the nature of Jesus himself, representative art was necessary to Christian worship. The Second Council of Nicaea (787) affirmed John's view of icons and condemned iconoclasts.
Although the events of the iconoclast controversy seem trivial today, they shaped the practice of Christian art for the entirety of the Middle Ages in both the Eastern and Western churches.