No sooner did I get through Phil’s last patristic roundup than he up and posted another. By the time I hit the save button, he may have posted three more!
Author: Mike Aquilina
Hilarity
Today is the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers, the Western Church’s great champion of orthodoxy during the Arian crisis. He is sometimes called the “Athanasius of the West.” Famous for his treatise On the Trinity, Hilary also wrote an account of the various synods and councils of his time. Like St. Ambrose, he learned a practical lesson from the Arians: that doctrine travels rapidly when it’s hitched to good music. So Hilary wrote hymns. His Pentecost hymn, Rejoice! The Year Upon Its Way survives, in translation, in many modern hymnals. If you get to Mass today (or even if you don’t), ponder Hilary’s relection on the Eucharist:
The words we use to speak of divine things must be used in no mere human and worldly sense. Nor must the perversity of a strange and impious interpretation be extorted from the soundness of heavenly words by any violent and headstrong preaching. Let us read what is written. Let us understand what we read, and let us fulfill the demands of a perfect faith.
How should we speak of the reality of Christ’s nature within us? Unless we have been taught by Him, our words are foolish and impious. For He Himself says, “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn 6:55-56).
As to the reality of the flesh and blood there is no room left for doubt. For the Lord Himself declares, and so does our faith, that it is truly flesh and truly blood. And when these are eaten and drunk, they bring about that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Is this not true? Yet those who affirm that Jesus Christ is not truly God are welcome to find it false. He Himself, therefore, is in us through the flesh and we in Him, while together with Him our own selves are in God.
Hilary’s name in Latin is Hilarius, and it means joyful. It is the root of the English “hilarious” and “hilarity.” So be of good cheer on this, his feast.
Canonade
Ben Smith continues his fascinating examination of the development of the New Testament canon. With today’s post he brings his discussion of The Eusebian Canon to a close. Ben is doing important work in a field where few will venture.
Don’t Touch That Radio Dial!
This Sunday, January 14, from 9 to 11 p.m. I’ll be on KDKA Radio to discuss the new, expanded edition of my book The Fathers of the Church. That’s 1020 on your AM dial if you’re near Pittsburgh. I’ll be speaking with the renowned Father Ronald Lengwin, who has been hosting his call-in show, Amplify, since 1975. Give us a ring if you’re listening. If I can get my hands on an electronic file, I’ll try to post it afterward.
Speaking of patristics: you may be aware that KDKA was the world’s first commercial radio station.
Amassing Artistic Analysis
The key to understanding Christian art is understanding the liturgy that’s at the heart of Christian life. That’s the thesis behind a new, three-volume work of art history by Father Timothy Verdon. An American, a Yale graduate, and a faculty member at Stanford, Father Verdon is a priest of the Diocese of Florence, Italy, where he heads up the office for catechesis through art. He attended the last synod of bishops at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI. Sandro Magister discusses Father Verdon’s trilogy and why we need it.
In three large volumes, two millennia of Christian art are recounted for the first time in their original context: the liturgy …
Italy, where Rome and the papacy are located, is the most extraordinary treasure chest of Christian art that exists in the world. But it is as if the key to unlock its marvelous treasures had been lost.
And these three volumes are intended to offer precisely the key to rediscover, comprehend, and live Christian art in its authentic light.
A solely aesthetic analysis of Christian art is misleading. Christian art is not made for the museums, but for the liturgy. An altar screen can be understood only if it is viewed together with the Eucharist celebrated on that same altar.
For example, why is it that in so many ancient churches, the altar is flanked on the one side by the archangel Gabriel making his annunciation, and on the other side by Mary who is responding to this, with the divine dove up above in the center?
The reply is simple: every time the Mass is celebrated, what the figures show in images is carried out on the altar at the center. The Son of God is announced again, and becomes truly present among men “by the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Thanks to the celebration of the Eucharist, the three images take on life in a way that is unimaginable for those who look at them apart from the sacramental rite.
Magister doesn’t hint at Father Verdon’s insights about paleochristian art — in the catacombs and the oldest churches. But the first volume does deal with the patristic era, and even peeks into the medieval. Unfortunately, the trilogy is only available in Italian.
Happiness Is …
… a warm review, while the book’s still warm from the printer.
Happy Catholic is thinking happy thoughts about the new, expanded edition of my Fathers of the Church. That makes me extremely happy.
Art and Substance
Robin M. Jensen’s early works — Understanding Early Christian Art and Face to Face: Portaits of the Divine in Early Christianity — have established her as an articulate and judicious scholar of paleo-Christian art. No one has done a better job of explaining the first three centuries of Christian images within their peculiar cultural context: the persecutions, the doctrinal disputes, and the great intellectual ferment.
Jensen is professor of Christian art and worship at Vanderbilt Divinity School, but she delivered the lectures that make up her most recent book as part of Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s “Liturgical Studies Series.” The Substance Of Things Seen: Art, Faith, And The Christian Community is, in part, a concise summary of her work so far; in part, an apologia for icons, addressed to American Protestants in aniconic and even iconoclastic traditions; and in part a passionate esthetic manifesto for the future of Christian arts.
The book begins with a memoir, as Jensen recounts her own upbringing in a church that had “very little tolerance for visual art in the worship space of our spare, Protestant sanctuary.” She proceeds to a summary history of “Visual Art and Spiritual Formation in Christian Tradition,” which she aptly relates to the sacramental worldview of Catholic and Orthodox Christians. She tells the story of Christianity’s recurring struggles with iconoclasm, restating the eighth-century Father St. John Damascene’s arguments in favor of images. Her chapter on the relationship between art and Scripture in the ancient Church — titled “Visual Exegesis: Sacred Text and Narrative Art in Early Christianity” — is stunning.
Her conclusions, however, will perplex many readers, and not just those who come from traditions that venerate images. While dismissing sentimental art, she calls for a religious esthetic open to works as overtly transgressive as the dung madonna, Terrence McNally’s homoerotic play “Corpus Christi,” and Andres Serrano’s infamous work that featured a sacred image steeped in human waste. About the last she says: “The photograph, which shows a plastic crucifix plunged into the artist’s blood and urine, speaks deeply to me about Christ’s bodily incarnation and the sanctification of human life, especially the life of those who suffer … Serrano’s crucifix is submerged in what it means to be human.” And later: “When they shock us, they are forced to think harder about what we really believe. Have we been hanging on to old images that are no longer relevant?”
One needn’t accept her conclusions to appreciate the outstanding ecumenical (and apologetic) value of her opening chapters.
Martin’s Sheen
Phil keeps translating the Life of St. Martin — and posts a humongous patristic roundup. With a start like that, 2007 just might be the Year of the Fathers.
Sightseeing in the Ancient World
Adrian “Cool Papa” Murdoch turns us on to an exhibit in Istanbul that gives “mind-blowing reconstructions” of the sights of ancient Byzantium. Adrian is author of several excellent histories, including The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World and The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West, both of which I read and enjoyed during my Christmas travels. I promise a full review in the months ahead.
Marian Monument
In 1950, when Pope Pius XII promulgated the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, the Anglican scholar R. L. P Milburn scoffed that “something has been solemnly stated as assured historical fact that has no other strictly historical basis even pretended than a Coptic romance.”
Now, Stephen J. Shoemaker of the University of Oregon has returned to the sources for Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, a hefty study of the ancient traditions regarding the end of the Virgin Mary’s earthly life. He takes full advantage of what he calls “the efflorescence of diverse traditions, both narrative and liturgical, all celebrating the Virgin’s departure from this world.” Not only does he provide exhaustive and technical analysis of the patristic paper trail, he mines the archeological record, too, to describe the relics of popular Marian devotion of the early Church. The book concludes with a fifty-page anthology of primary Marian material from the age of the Fathers — full texts, not just excerpts — including works from the Ethiopian, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and (yes) Coptic traditions.
The book is a demanding read, but rewarding. Both Catholics and Protestants should appreciate an historical study not refracted through the lens of the Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Shoemaker’s own religious affiliation is nowhere apparent in this study, as he trains the same critical faculties upon both the ancient texts and recent Vatican pronouncements.
This paperback is actually the second edition — the first appeared in 2003 — but it’s the first to come within the price range of mere mortals. Shoemaker’s study should be required reading for anyone who professes Marian doctrine and anyone interested in the faith of the Fathers.
The Lord’s Baptism
For today’s feast day, Jeff Ziegler of Ziegler A List points us to St. Thomas Aquinas, who provides a veritable anthology of the Fathers. If you don’t get enough from St. Thomas, get yourself a copy of Kilian McDonnell’s The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation.
Good Book, Great Exhibit
My colleague David Scott and I drove down to D.C. last Thursday and snuck into the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery just before the men in uniform shut the doors on the exhibit In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000. I wish I had gone earlier, so that I could urge you, too, to go. There were far more items — and far more important items — than I had expected.
There were samples from most major finds and important collections — the Nag Hammadi library, the Dead Sea Scrolls, St. Catherine’s at Mount Sinai, Oxyrynchus, and the Cairo Geniza. These are the manuscripts you read about in the footnotes and the critical editions. Some of the earliest examples were just scrawled verses on papyrus that had been sifted from 2,000-year-old trash. My favorite display featured a chunk of wood on which someone had carved a seemingly random series of Bible verses in Coptic, perhaps as a handwriting exercise. There were manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, and other languages, some of them lavishly illustrated with icons or decorative script.
What most impressed me was how the early Christians treated the sacred text. To them it was clearly a sacred object, often a liturgical object, so the Bible was richly decorated with gems and precious metals, and the inks themselves sometimes cost a small fortune. I could have camped in those rooms for days just soaking in the fine artistry.
The good news is that the Smithsonian has preserved a permanent record of the exhibit in a gorgeous (and relatively inexpensive) coffee-table volume with useful commentary by several scholars — and heaping helpings of the Church Fathers. (I must raise a complaint about the binding, however, as it came unstuck in delivery.) The book is worth having. After a few pages, you’ll see why this exhibit set new attendance records for the Smithsonian.
The exhibit was remarkably sensitive to the eucharistic milieu of the early Church. Some of the books on display were not Bibles per se, but lectionaries and sacramentaries. And here’s a line worth keeping from the catalog: “the Christian Bible as a whole was the cumulative result of the reading habits of Christian communities in their liturgical gatherings.” We find that idea in Justin and Irenaeus and ever afterward. Sacrament and Scriptures are mutually illuminating. That’s why the Mass has always comprised two liturgies: Word and Eucharist.
Thanks to the Smithsonian for showing us the beauty of the Word inspired, as rendered by the Church at prayer.
Happy Epiphany!
The McGregors of KVSS and I spent some time talking about this weekend’s feast and its roots in the early Church. Junior has posted an audio file (scroll down to the bottom of the “Talks” page) to enhance your celebration. Kris McGregor will be joining Scott Hahn and me for our pilgrimage to Rome. Maybe you can come, too?
Motherly MP3
In case you’ve forgotten, today’s the feast of St. Syncletica of the Egyptian desert. KVSS radio marked the occasion by interviewing me, and then posting the first (of I hope many) segments on Mothers of the Church. You’ll find the audio file at their site for now and eventually at this site as well.
If you want to read St. Syncletica, try The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where she plays a starring role, and also the new edition of my Fathers of the Church, which now includes Mothers as well.
Found Poetry
Adrian Murdoch fills us in on the Chrisitan poet Sedulius.