The Spiritus in the Romanesque iconography and after 1274 (Council)

The Spiritus in the Romanesque iconography.?

Example from the Illumination Canterbury Arundel MS 157?

Dr. D.Persoons???Orcid : 0000 0002 6488 [email protected]

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1. The illumination BL Arundel-MS-157, was written in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The folio 7v shows two people in the centre, who are God the Father and his Son the Messiah. This illumination represents Jesus during his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. He appears luminescent and surrounded by the Souls of the two prophets, Moses and Elijah, while God the Father speaks and his three apostles bow down1. But the careful examination of certain details can profoundly modify the meaning of this work.

Figure 1 : The Canterbury Psalter Arundel-MS-157 f.7v should represent the Christian trinity: Father, Sun and Spirit.?

1. First, let's study the interpretation given by the British Museum in 2021, of this folio 7v which reveals a significant opinion4.??

"Christ, should be flanked by Moses and Elijah, and transfigured to appear in glory to Sts John, Peter and James, all kneeling below. Moses, to his left, is identifiable by the horns on his head. This attribute is based on the account of Moses’ descent from Mount Sinai in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which says that ‘he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord’ (Exodus 34:29), where the Hebrew word ?aran was mis-translated as horned (the word can also mean ‘to radiate’).."

This classic interpretation is well established.. But a precise look can help, and seems to show some contradictions about this interpretation. We are going to proceed to the graphic study of this illumination by comparing it to another very similar one, dated from the same period. A similar illumination exists in BL-Royal-1-DX f.4r, with a same interpretation1. We are going to look for the commonalities that can be considered as symbols shared by the scholars of the thirteenth century.??

Fig.2. a) At the bottom, the left figure is Saint Peter. This one has long hair, no beard, and feminine features. He could be “Anima”2, the vital part of the soul,?sometimes represented as a woman (?) (in Swiss Engelberg Stiftsbibliothek-MS-Cod-72 f.1v illumination for example).

b) An interesting comparison is made with the BL-Royal-1-DX f.4r manuscript.?This one is also dated from the first quarter of the thirteenth century. We see that Saint Peter does not wear a beard eithe, and lies comfortably on his arm, that Saint John is younger but also wears a tonsure, his halo is less rich, but he also supports the Messiah, finally Saint James is fully clothed, we see neither his hands nor his feet.

It can be concluded that these common characteristics should be seen as shared symbols. St. Peter resting comfortably would represent "the body" or at least the animated (biological) part of the soul, Anima. St. James the Invisible would represent the invisible part of the soul, Spiritus. St. John the Mystic would in both cases support the body of the Messiah, and would represent "Mens" , the Platonic Reason.

3. The second character is old, he has an ornate halo, a white beard and a tonsure. He seems quite far from the portrait of Saint John.?Indeed, Achard of Saint Victor wrote in circa 1160:

"Only the “mens”, in fact, immediately assumes by itself the love of God, and, having assumed it, transfuses it as much as possible according to certain affections and effects to the spiritus and, through the intermediary of it, to the spiritus' soul2".

4. At the bottom right, the third character has his hands and legs hidden. According to the medieval code6, he should be invisible himself, so he could be the human “spiritus”, and not only Saint James.??

5. ?At the upper part of the illumination we observe:

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Fig. 3: On the left, a large figure wears a dark halo with horns. He could be Moses (as claimed by the British Library) but also the Moon, the divine “Spiritus”. He holds a book, possibly God's Word. He is in relation with the character at the bottom right, the invisible human “Spiritus”.?

6. On the top right, the character owns a brightening halo, so the Solar Spirit, called divine “Anima”. So is the prophet Elijah, who is traditionally connected with the Sun (chariot of fire).?

7. This scene of the Transfiguration is the miracle of Light. The two prophets are not really present, but their souls surround Jesus. Michel Evdokimov7, theologian and orthodox archpriest specifies in about this Transfiguration:

"And suddenly Jesus finds himself all haloed, all ablaze with a wonderful light that is called “uncreated light”. It comes from elsewhere and is the manifestation of God on earth. This light is interpreted by the Fathers of the Church as being the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is there, all shrouded in light, and the voice of the Father resounds: This is my beloved Son, in whom I have placed all my affection. Listen to him! The Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor is, therefore, a manifestation of God in three persons".

Moses and Elijah are present next to Jesus. Now, according to Orthodox Theology, the 3 people in God are present at the time of the miracle. The illumination shows God the Father at the very top speaking with phylacteries, the Son is standing in a halo, so the two remaining figures are necessearely the Holy Spirit. It is no coincidence. The Platonic Soul of the World is also made up of two elements, Thumos and Epithumia (Anima and Spiritus). The elements provided by the Theologian Evdokimov are essential to understand this Transfiguration. It shows the Holy Spirit as a double person, Moses and Elijah. This Holy Spirit surrounds the scene of the Transfiguration. Not only Moses and Elijah are next to Jesus, but each is connected with an apostle. This interpretation is faithful to the medieval symbolism, and explains the figure of the X connecting the human Spiritus to the divine Spiritus and the human Anima to the divine Anima.

8. There is a remarkable Byzantine Mosaic on the south wall of the Palatine Chapel, in Palermo, dated 1143-1151.?This image was made 75 years before?the Arundel MS 157 illumination and 3,500 kilometers from Canterbury. Altough they look very similar, which again plead for a common shared symbolism. We notice the Christo-Platonic double-cross, with the Messiah in a mandorla, surrounded by the Soul of the two prophets. The Apostle St. James in white contrasts with Elijah in black, and St. Peter in black contrasts with Moses in white. St. John supports Christ in the manner of “Mens”. These three are below the line separating the divine from the human, so they would represent the human Soul, according to the Neoplatonic philosophy. Siena's fourteenth century icon shows exactly the same scene 75 years after ArundelMS 157 illumination. But this time, the double-cross has disappeared. For the Catholic Church, the Chiasma sign X of the Holy Spirit was rejected in the mean time. Generally, all the chrismons desappeared from the Romanesque churches, and Romanesque art ended.?

Figure 4?A: Mosaic on the south wall of the Palatine Chapel, Palermo 1143-115118. Moses in white and Elijah in black symbolise the Chiasma. This double cross inspired the Romanesque chrismons.

B: The same scene in the painting by Duccio di Buonunsegna (copy), Siena, 1308-1311, national galery, London8: The 1274 Council resulted in a profound change in Divine representation. The Chrismon arround the Messiah has desappeared. By that time, the Holy Spirit became the prerogative of the Pope.??

9. Who is the central character??

The medieval Soul was perceived as composed of a psychic “Anima” linked to the body (conscious) and a mysterious pneumatic “Spiritus” (unconscious). “Mens” wisdom coordinated the two components and linked Man to God. The mosaic icon from Palermo takes this trilogy perfectly. Saint John is the upper component "Mens”when Peter and James are human Anima and Spiritus.

Figure 5 : 1) Saint John supporting Jesus 2)?Clermont Ferrand MS 0001 f. 452 Anima and Spiritus, on Mens knees. Wisdom suckles the Anima soul (on the right) and the spirit (Spiritus) on the left. This is the Platonic tripartition 3) Mazarine MS 0729 f 230. Hugues of Saint Victorius inspired by Anima (left) and Spiritus (right). Spiritus being invisible, he is represented dressed.

10. What does the figure of the apostles lying on the ground represent?

Fig. 6: the connexions between Moses, Elijah and the two Apostles Peter and James.?James (bottom right) has his body hidden, so the human Spiritus, and Moises (top left) is the divine Spiritus, so the Moon (black Halo). Peter (bottom left) who is the force of the Church is the human Anima, and Elijah ( top right) is known to be in connexion with the Sun , (chariot of fire), so the Force.?

In Canterbury Psalter Arundel-MS-157 f.7v,?Saint James is white clothed, he is connected to Moses in black-blue (Moon). Saint Peter in dark green, the head of the Church is linked with Eljiah in white (Sun). Saint John, wisdom, supports Christ on his back. As confirmed by Philippe Kacou9:?

"We all know that the Moon is the Law, for the Judgment and the condemnation of the nations, while the sun is the Grace, for the Salvation! In Apoc. 12: 1, it is true that the moon is the Law, that is to say Moses, while Elijah sends down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. Elijah sent down fire on dozens of soldiers in 2 Kings 1., and the Bible says in Rev. 11 that he will do it again9".

The theologian Jean Pierre Prieur14 quoted, in 1998, Saint Justin the Martyr, one of the first Christian theologians of the second century AD:

"Plato deals with the soul of the World and explains that it was split lengthwise into two strips and that these strips were attached to each other, crisscrossed in the middle in the shape of a X . They were then curved so that they meet on the opposite and form two concentric circles. So that the Soul of the World surrounds the sphere of the Universe (?χ?ασεν αυτ?ν ?ν τω παντ?)…?but from an erroneous reading of the account of the erection of a figure of the cross".

This was confirmed by Larry L. Hurtado 15 in 2018. Juan Antonio Ola?eta Molina16 brings the following clarification in his book on the Pyrenean chrismons:?

"According to Saint Isidore, since the time of Emperor Augustus, the letter X was the only one considered “duplex”, with what would be the one that would designate the Holy Spirit. As we have already seen, this is not the first Latinization that was carried out in this Greek monogram.?The second step was to consider that the author of the inscription had taken three of the Greek characters as Latin letters to form the word PAX, which symbolized the Trinity. The text of Bishop Rufinus of Assisi (1182) says that “the word PAX admirably expresses the mystery of the Trinity, the P designates the Father, the A the Son and the X the Holy Spirit".?

In 1949, Emile Bréhier10 reported in his book “The Philosophy of the Middle Ages”, the major Abelard’s purposes. We reproduce here a short and fundamental excerpt:

"Abelard commented on Plato as one commented on the Bible: the way of speaking enigma, he says, "is as familiar to philosophers as it is to prophets"; all that Plato said about the soul of the world must be understood in an enveloped sense (per involucrum)19 … In reality, Plato (as well as Macrobe) meant that, as our souls confer animal life on our bodies, the Soul of the world, which is the Holy Spirit, is for our souls a principle of spiritual life".

Emile Bréhier, the important French historian of the 1950s, was a specialist in medieval Neoplatonism. According to him, the famous Theologian Abelard affirmed that the Soul of the world was "enveloping" (ambient), and was the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the Holy Spirit had the attributes of the Platonic Soul (according to Abelard) and was all around. Spirit was everywhere.?Jacqueline Leclerc-Marx17 concluded a brilliant article on "Mother Earth to Lust" that:?

"Sometimes the relationships that unite images-signs are clearly distinguished, other times it seems futile to try to force analogies. Everything happens as if the Form, in its coherence, lends itself to all the subtleties and all the games of the Spirit”.

We conclude that the interpretation of a thirteenth century illumination cannot be done in a "rationalist" way , but necessarily requires the recourse of the Spirit (inspiration).?

11. Plato deals with the Soul of the World (Anima Mundi) and explains that it was split into two strips lengthwise and that these strips were attached to each other, criss-crossed in the middle in the shape of a χ. According to Plato, the Soul was imprinted in χ in the universe. These two opposing and complementary forces balance the Order of the World, and likewise the human soul is composed of two opposing psychic forces which balance each other under the authority of "Mens" wisdom.?

Fig. 7 : According to Esteban lorente11, the?chrismon consists of a vertical line (Father), a horizontal line (Son) and an X representing the Holy Spirit.

Esteban Lorente studied the symbolic interpretation of the figure of the chrismons, these double cross figures visible until the thirtenth century in the Spanish and French Pyrenees. He concludes, once again, that the X represents the Holy Spirit, and that the chrismon is the sign of the Catholic trinity.

12. Therefore, the chrismon visible on the Canterbury arundel-ms-157 folio 7v does have an X, reminiscent of the Holy Spirit, sign of the double Platonic letter. Indeed, in 1959, Robert Javelet12 wrote in the “Psychology of twelfth century spiritual writers:”

"According to Hugues de Saint Victor, everyone recognizes the dualism of metaphysics. He has the watermark of Platonism. The soul is the knight of the body. In fact, it has an ambiguous situation on two levels: as a kind of spiritual material, it takes "real existence" (Intelligence) as the centre and is spiritual; As a principle of body animation, it is animation. She lives on her own by wisdom and on her body by sensibility".

13. Why does the current interpretation of the miracle of the Transfiguration avoid talking about the Holy Spirit? The Council of Lyon (1274) established firmly that:?

“The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son not as two principles, but as a single principle, not by two spirations, but by a single spiration”.?

According to this dogmatic formula, there is only one current of grace in the Church, that of Christ, and that current of grace is the Holy Spirit (spirit of Christ). After the Council of 1274 A.D., Roman Catholics granted the exclusivity of the grace of the Holy Spirit to the Pope, who is the only one to distribute it. This greatly reduced the role of the Spirit in the lives of Catholics. While for the Orthodox, the grace of the Holy Spirit has remained with the whole Church and cannot be attributed to anyone, every Christian possesses it. The independence and multitude of the Holy Spirit are therefore essential in Orthodox Christianity as it was in the Romanesque era.?

14. We can conclude that: since the Canterbury Manuscript Psalter Arundel-MS-157 f.7v was written in the early thirteenth century, so 50 years before the Council of 1274 A.D., it is coherent to analyse it with the mentality of its time. It must therefore be considered that Jesus is surrounded by the double Holy Spirit, in the form of an oblique cross (Chiasma) and endowed with two opposing natures: a conscious (bilogical) Nature called "Anima" (Sun) and an invisible and unconscious Nature13 called "Spiritus" (Moon). The soul of the two prophets thus corresponds to the astral symbol: here, Moses is the Moon and Elijah is the Sun. They surround Jesus as the Holy Spirit surrounded everything.

Biblio :

1. Persoons Dominique, “Fils du soleil et de la lune” , 2019, Mémogrames ,Bruxelles.

2. Lystopad Iryna,?2016, “Un platonisme original au XIIe siècle : Métaphysique pluraliste et théologie trinitaire dans le de Unitate d’Achard de saint-Victor”,?Thèse de l’école pratique des hautes études, Paris, p. 27

3. Fontbonne Alexis, 2016, “La référence à l’Esprit-Saint de la réforme grégorienne au XIVe siècle”, Thèse d’Histoire médiévale, Université Paris ouest Nanterre, p. 11

4. British Library, 2021, “Medieval manuscripts blog ?, Prefacing the Psalms https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/illuminated-manuscripts/page/2/ 15/10/2021

5. British Library, 2021, catalogue of illuminated manuscripts, Psalter, England, Oxford, 1st quarter of the 13th century, https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=30152

6. Baschet Jér?me, Bonne Jean-Claude, Dittmar Pierre-Olivier, 2012, “Le monde roman, par-delà le bien et le Mal”, Les éditions Arkhê, p.154.

7. Evdokimov Michel, 2020,?? témoin et voix de l’Orthodoxie, ? https://michelevdokimov.fr/2020/09/24/la-transfiguration-2/

8. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Duccio_di_Buoninsegna_039b.jpg

9. Kacou philippe, 2009, ? le livre du prophète ?, tome 3, Edilivre, Sauramps Paris

10. Bréhier Emile, 1949, “La philosophie du Moyen-?ge”, p. 115:?

https://philosophie.cegeptr.qc.ca/wp-content/documents/La-philosophie-du-Moyen-%C3%82ge-1949.pdf.

11. Lorente Estaban,1993, ? Las inscriptionnes del timpano de la cathedral de Jaca ?, Artigrama, n° 10, p. 143-161

12. Javelet Robert, 1959,?“Psychologie des auteurs Spirituels du XIIe siècle”, Revue des sciences religieuses, 33-1,?p. 18-64.

13. Gardair Emmanuèle, 2014, “Cognitions ‘rationnelles’ et ‘irrationnelles’ : quels liens entretiennent la pensée magique et la pensée scientifique dans les raisonnements quotidiens”, Intellectica, 62, p. 51-68

14 : Prieur Jean-Marc, avril-juin 1998,?‘ La dimension cosmique de la crucifixion du Christ et de la croix dans la littérature chrétienne ancienne ‘, Revue d'histoire et de?philosophie religieuses, 78, 2,?39-56.

15 : Hurtado Larry Weir, 2018,’The staurogram in early christian manuscripts: early visual reference to the crucified Jesus? ‘?Text and artefact, biblical studies, Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

16. Juan Antonio Olaneta Molina, , ? De Roma a los Pirineos, Genesis, evolucion y lectura del crimson”, Huesca, Enciclopedia del Romanico en Aragon,?José Maria Pérez Gonzalez, 2016, Santa Maria la real del Patrimonio Historico

17. Leclerc-Kadaner Jacqueline, 1975, ? De la Terre-mère à la luxure ?, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 18, 1, Jan 1975, 37-43

18 : https://www.geopolitica.ru/article/slava-tebe-pokazavshemu-nam-svet

19. Note : In the Latin expression “per involucrum” (through the envelope) it must be understood that the soul of the World envelops the all world and gives it its meaning, his “principle” of spiritual life”. The major point is to consider the Spirit was an envelope which surrounded the all earth , like the “air”.?