Paradise lost
The Gero Cross, Cologne Cathedral
The Gero cross (commissioned by Archbishop Gero of
Cologne and carved by a Saxon artist in the 10th century) is thought to be the
oldest western depiction of a dead Christ on the cross.
In the 11th century, representations of the crucified Christ
began appearing throughout Europe; artists also began to show the saints in
poses of great suffering; and, as worshipers entered the new cathedrals, they passed
under carvings representing the Last Judgment.
What brought about these changes? Why did Christians turn
from a vision of paradise in this life to a focus on the crucifixion and
judgment?
Brock and Parker write, For three decades Charlemagne (742-814) waged a campaign of
terror to subdue the Saxons on his northern border. As part of this campaign,
Saxons were baptized against their will into Charlemagne’s version of Christianity. Descendents of the Saxons produced the Gero
cross and other early images of the crucified Christ; and so, to understand the
emergence of the dead Christ in Christian imagery, we must recall the Saxons’
story.
When the western Roman Empire fell apart in the 6th century,
Europe had fragmented into a patchwork of warring dynasties. In northern
Europe, Frankish armies fought to subjugate neighboring peoples, including the
Saxons.
The Saxons, an agrarian people living on the Rhine, had already
embraced Christianity – but their version of the faith mixed elements of their
old nature religion (which centered on great holy trees and sacred springs)
with more orthodox Christian beliefs.
Before Charlemagne’s conquests, efforts to convert the
Saxons to a more orthodox Christianity had met with little success. The Irish monk Columbanus (590) established
Celtic-style monasteries in Saxon territory and taught Celtic penitential
practices; but most Saxons had resisted his teaching.
A century later (719) the pope sent the English monk
Boniface to bring orthodox Christianity to the Saxons – and when Boniface cut
down a great holy tree, Frankish soldiers were there to enforce his threats. (Boniface
is still remembered today as the apostle to Germany, the builder of an alliance
between the Carolingian family and the papacy, and the reformer of the Frankish
church.)
For Charlemagne and his warriors, the cross of Christ was
the symbol of the divine power that would lead them to victory and protect them
in battle. Charlemagne used the legend
of Constantine’s cross to justify his campaign of violence. As the clergy traveled with the Frankish
armies, the cross – once a sign of life – became a sign of terror. Before each
battle, soldiers confessed their sins, then received the Eucharist, believing
that communion joined them to the body and blood of the all-powerful Christ,
who assured them victory over death.
Converting the Saxons to Carolingian Christianity bound them
in treaties of submission. The Saxons’
sacred places were destroyed, and Charlemagne installed his own bishops and
abbots – creating a system to control the population after war had ceased.
Pressed by violence into obedience, the Saxons began to
produce art that bore the marks of their baptism in blood. In the Gero cross, a piece of their
once-sacred oak was carved into an effigy of brutalization, and their epic poem,
The Dream of the Rood, described the
tree’s conversion.
The Dream of the Rood
The Dream of the Rood
was written before the 8th century, and is one of the oldest surviving works in Old English. Composed by an Anglo-Saxon
Christian in Northumbria, England, the text circulated throughout northern
Europe. The poem evokes the old Saxon ritual gatherings around sacred trees;
and in The Dream a splendid holy tree
is turned into a bloody shrine. To read it in translation, go to http://www.lightspill.com/poetry/oe/rood.html
Declare him killed
As the Saxon frontier became a battleground between two
forms of Christianity, the conflict came to a head over the meaning of the
Eucharist. Saxon theologians argued for the
traditional understanding of the Eucharist – it was the glorified, resurrected
Christ who was present in the Eucharist. But Carolingian theologians believed the
consecrated elements were the material, historical body of Christ – they argued
that it was the crucified Christ who became present. In the Carolingian liturgy, the Eucharist had
become an encounter with Christ the victim and Christ the judge.
By the late 9th century, Carolingian manuscripts included
pictures of Christ dead on the cross; though not yet prominent in churches,
these images of death appeared in texts used by priests. Christ’s death began to haunt the western
European imagination, riddling it with a diffuse anxiety about existence, a
terror of judgment, and a piety of holy suffering.
The Carolingian Eucharist also placed enormous control in
the hands of the clergy; in each liturgy, they reenacted ritual death; and the
clergy were the only ones authorized to prescribe penance.
The Christian consensus against killing began to fray when a
few 9th century clerics asserted that soldiers should not have to do penance,
since they fought with Christ’s support.
The Carolingian Eucharist had been reshaped in imperial
terms and used as a strategy for conquest.
But the new liturgy had moved away from its original focus on the
life-giving love of Christ, and thus ceased to convey the message of life in
its fullness – fellowship with the risen Christ.
The arts of resistance
The Heliand
Written in Old Saxon in the 9th century, the Heliand (the Healer) blends the four gospels into one story. (Note the columns in the page above – a column
for each gospel, and a fifth column synthesizing the narrative.)
The Heliand was based
on a 2nd-century Syrian text from the second century, and it shows the
influence of Syrian Christianity: a sense of this world as paradise pervades
the text. Christ’s incarnation, transfiguration
and resurrection form the arc of the story – indicating that paradise is the
source, the earthly dwelling place, and the ultimate home of Christ and his
loyal followers.
In the Heliand, Jesus’
passion story unfolds as a battle with both demonic and earthly enemies. He
outwits his captors through his death; he slips away from his enemies and
travels to God. When his followers take his body down from the
cross they bury it in a Saxon grave (forbidden by the Carolingian church). Roman soldiers are sent to guard the grave, but
Christ in a burst of light; then he sets free the captives in Hel’s realm, and
opens the road to the green fields of paradise.
Brock and Parker argue that the Heliand only appeared to express compliance with Carolingian
Christianity. They suggest that the Heliand is actually ‘a hidden transcript
of resistance:’
The multivalences of
art, poetry, and story – their ability to carry
multiple meanings at once – allow for protest and
compliance at the same time, in the same work.
For Saxons to write in German instead of Latin was in itself
an act of defiance – but the story of Jesus’ birth suggests striking parallels
between Herod and Charlemagne; and the adult Jesus is a kind of resistance
fighter, surrounded by a loyal band of Saxon fighters.
The Heliand also offered
a dissident Eucharist. Its words echo
the old Gallican rite suppressed by Charlemagne, and references to the goodness
of the Creation reverberate throughout the poem. It consistently speaks of this world as
beautiful and shining with light. In its
Eucharist Christ’s body and blood possess a ‘making-power,’ the life-creating power
of divine creativity. A sharper alternative to the Carolingian theology of the
Eucharist can hardly be imagined.
To see (and hear) The Lord’s Prayer from The Heliand, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8H9NIhd92Y
The Liber Manualis
To read a fragment of
Dhuoda’s composition, go to http://www.ub.edu/duoda/diferencia/html/en/primario13.html
Dhuoda was born in the early 9th century – a time of constant warfare as
Charlemagne’s grandsons fought over the division of his empire. Dhuoda’s husband Bernard, the ruler of Septimania
in southern France, was caught up in this political and military struggle. To keep her husband in line, Dhuoda’s first son
William was held hostage at the court of Charles the Bald; as soon as her
second son was born, he was taken away to live with his father. Eventually
politics caught up with her family. Her husband was condemned for rebellion and
executed in 844; both of her sons were killed in the years that followed.
Dhoda’s world – Septimania (today’s Languedoc)
But in spite of her struggles, Dhuoda’s faith was still
centered on Christ’s incarnation into this world. Her faith was the core of her advice to her
son; like Ephrem the Syrian, Dhuoda prayed that her son would ascend to
divinity by a swift-footed and happy ascent with the saints of God, and that he
would be alert to recognize the Spirit of God in the world:
May he deserve to
climb the highest peak, swift-footed, happy, with those who are Yours. May his
perceptions always be alert, open, to You; may he live blissfully for ever… May
Your generous grace penetrate him, with peace and security of body and mind, in
which he may flourish in the world, and have children, holding what’s here so
as not to lose what’s there.
But as Europe was preoccupied with wars – widespread and
local – the life and faith of Christians
were drawn into the ongoing political struggle, and Dhuoda could see violence
beginning to creep into the life of the church.
Two centuries after Dhuoda (and within 100 years of the creation of the
Gero cross) the Carolingian view of the Eucharist would become established
doctrine in Europe, and denying this view of the Eucharist would be heresy.
But Brock and Parker remind us that images such as the Gero
cross vibrated between public and hidden meanings: In public display, the crucifix signaled
Saxon submission to the Carolingian’s crucified Christ, the Judge of
humanity. However – as a hidden symbol
of resistance – the crucifix unveiled Christ as a co-sufferer with the Saxons in
their struggle against a colonizing empire.
Whenever the arts of resistance exert their resurrecting
power, imperial injustice is not the last word.
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