i' L.oz IMAGES OFTHE CRUCIFIXION IN LATE ANTIQUITY The testimony of engraved gems Felicity Harley Thesis submitted for PhD candidature, June 2001 Centre for European Studies and General Linguistics Classics Discipline Adelaide University And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour, when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah." And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see wether Eli'jah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!". Mark 15:22-39 CONITENTS Abstract lll Declaration iv Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 1 I Chapter THE STATE OF THE QUESTION 10 Crucifixion Iconography and Engraved Gems A. METHODS OF APPROACH I. Creating a Theory of Rejection: I6 1. Social and Political Impediments 17 2l 2. Mystery and Idolatry 3. Christological Concerns 22 4. Art Historical Obstacles 24 5. The "Quasi-avoidance" Solution 26 tr. An Alternative View: neglect JJ B. TFIE CRUCIFIXION GEMS: a survey of past scholarship 42 I. Engraved Gems 47 tr. The Crucifixion Gems: some problems of disparity 51 Itr. The Origins and Definition of Christian Art 57 Towards a New Perspective 60 II Chapter THE ICONOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE c. 200 - 600 62 A Brief Review L Second and Third Centuries 65 tr. Third and Fourth Centuries 69 m. Fifth Century 79 IV. Sixth Century 100 III Chapter THE CRUCIFIXION GEMS tt7 Part 1. LATE ANTIQUITY A. The Pereire Jasper r20 tzr 1. The Inscription 2.The Jasper and its Group 131 3. The Iconography 134 B. The Nott and Constanza Gems r46 1. Jesus and the Cross 150 2. The Inscriptions 159 3. Veneration Iconography 161 Part2. BYZANTIUM 184 A. The Lewis Jasper 184 1. Jesus 185 2.The Lance and Sponge-Bearers 197 3. The Inscription 207 4. Contemporary Engraved Gems 2t2 B. Gaza Jasper 216 1. The Script 219 2.The Iconography: 224 a. the attendant figures: some problems of identification 229 b. the twisted and suffering Jesus 243 P art 3 . PROBLEMATIC AMULETS 259 A. Orpheus Bakchikos Seal-Cylinder 259 B. Crucified-Ass Amulet 26t C. Haematite Amulet 263 CONCLUSION 266 Appendix 1: Catalogue of Engraved Gems 28t Appendix 2: The Lewis Jasper and its Group: Spier 286 List of Abbreviations 288 Bibliography 289 List of Illustrations 3r4 Plates l1 ABSTRACT This study takes five gemstones, each engraved with an image of the Crucifixion and previously dated to the Late Antique period, as its focus. Traditionally it has been thought that Christian images of the Crucifixion emerged in the fifth century and that prior to that time, the subject was consciously rejected by artists. Utilising the largely ignored and invariably misused evidence of the gems, this study challenges both the conventional view of the early history of the image and the theory of rejection. Although the gems have previously been cited to indicate the portrayal of the Crucifixion prior to the fifth century, confusion about their authenticity and art- historical validity has seen them marginalised or dismissed from most iconographic studies of the subject in Late Antiquity. Yet clearly the question of the avoidance of the Crucifixion cannot be addressed until a systematic examination of the gems' iconographic as well as compositional, physical and epigraphic evidence, is carried out. This study undertakes such an examination. It demonstrates the way in which critical information regarding the evolution of the Crucifixion image in Late Antiquity has been seriously obstructed in previous studies through the dismissal, misapplication and./or misinterpretation of the gems. Focusing on iconography, it presents a revised chronology for the gems. It suggests that only three are Late Antique, with the fourth gem being early Byzantine. The Late Antique date customarily assigned to the fifth gem is rejected and a Middle Byzantine date proposed. The core investigation of the gems is prefaced by a short review of the material and literary evidence customarily cited in iconographic studies for the representation of the Crucifixion between c. AD 200 and c. 600. The extent to which the gems augment and transform this evidence is shown to be significant. Drawing on the testimony of the gems this study proposes that at least two design models of the representation of Jesus on the cross were circulating prior to the fifth century but proved unpopular: the earliest model is "magical" and is characterised by its realism; the second, later model is Christian and is characterised by its symbolism. The focus away from the subject in art prior to the fifth century is shown to be witnessed in the small number of surviving gems and in the compositional formats and iconography adopted on them. On the strength of such discoveries the study concludes that the prevailing assumptions regarding the rejection of Crucifixion imagery in Late Antiquity need to be reconsidered. 111 ACKNOV/LEDGMENTS Several years ago I was granted a stipendiary Australian Postgraduate Award by Adelaide University which enabled me to begin this study. During my PhD candidature a Research Abroad Scholarship from the Graduate Studies office and the Mutual Community Postgraduate Travel Grant from the Alumni Association assisted me in continuing my research in England, where I was able to examine the gems that form the focus of the study. At the British Museum Christopher Entwistle gave me access to various objects, photographs and drawings and has since fielded many queries and requests. At the Fitzwilliam Museum Penny Wilson gave me permission to view the Lewis Crucifixion jasper. Whilst in England I was able to meet with Sr Mary Charles Murray. The example of her scholarship and her enthusiasm for this project in its early stages was pivotal and I am extremely grateful to her for her encouragement. I am lucky to have benefited from the help of many talented friends and colleagues during the period in which this study was researched and written. I would particularly like to thank Paul Tuffin and Anne Geddes, and my supervisor Margaret O'Hea for the singular role she played. Roger Scott, Sam Lieu, Bill Adler and V/endy Mayer have also given freely of their time, skills, encouragement and advice over a number of years and at crucial stages in my research. Jeffrey Spier's passion for engraved gems has been an important influence and I am thankful for his support. Having given me access to his unpublished research and photographs, this study has been significantly enhanced by his generosity and knowledge. David Richardson has been a longstanding advocate and has influenced the growth of this study on many fronts. In their wisdom (and patience!) John Roffey and Alan Cadwallader have been generous and indispensable contributors. I am also grateful to Alan Treloar and Greg Horsley for their kindness; and to Gary Vikan and Jas Elsner for their advice and encouragement. Many of the people mentioned above have commented on sections of the draft, as has Steven Ogden. The final text has been improved by the keen eyes and suggestions of Fred Ebbeck, Anne Geddes and Dick Richards. Any errors remain my own responsibility. The encouragement and assistance of my parents, plus the faithful support of my friends, has been a source of great strength over so many years. Mary Lou Simpson has been a steadfast believer in my research and I am deeply grateful to her for the ways she has sought to demonstrate this. I would particularly like to acknowledge Dick Richards who is a most generous mentor and friend. Finally, special thanks go to Elspeth, my extraordinary mother and ally, for her endurance, patience, humour and unwavering belief in me. INTRODUCTION Lying on her deathbed, a Cappadocian nun named Macrina wore a small iron cross and an iron ring, both suspended around her neck on a thin chain and hidden beneath her robes. The ring bore the symbol of the cross and was hollowed out in the centre: in the hollow was secreted a tiny piece of wood, wood from the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Macrina died in AD 380 at the age of fifty-four. Her wearing of a relic of the cross is recorded in the eulogy composed by her younger brother Saint Gregory of Nyssa.r Despite its antiquity, the anecdote has a disarming familiarity; for whilst few Christians now own relics from Jesus' Crucifixion, metal crosses bearing his dead or dying body are common as items of jewellery. We recognise in Macrina's story both the immutable centrality of the Crucifixion to the Christian faith, from fourth century Cappadocia to the present day, as well as the potent desire to make physical the spiritual connection with God and His son, through Jesus' act of self- sacrifice. Yet the centrality in Christian art and culture of the image of Jesus' brutal and public execution outside Jerusalem around AD 33, witnessed in its role today as a universally recognised symbol of spiritual confidence, is a later phenomenon. Although arising out of the same stimulus that moved Macrina to keep the relic secretly next to her chest, the urge to produce explicit images of the Crucifixion does not manifest itself until after her lifetime. It is the formative history of the Crucifixion image, from around the third until the early seventh century, that is the focus of this thesis. These chronological parameters are set according to the material evidence that survives for the development of the image. They begin in Rome less than two hundred years after the Crucifixion with a remarkable piece of ancient graffito executed around AD t Gr"gory of Nyssa, Vita s. Macrinae;trans. V. W. Callahan, FC 58, pp. 184-185. OnMacrina's life see Brown (1988), pp.277-279. I Intoduction 200 on the Palatine Hill. The graffito is accompanied by a crude drawing of a man hailing a crucified figure, the figure having the head of a donkey lPI.lal. After this pictorial reference to the Christian belief in a crucified deity, the subject of Jesus' crucifixion does not seem to appear in Christian art until the fifth century. From that century there survive two images. These are traditionally cited as the earliest surviving Christian images of the Crucifixion in a narrative context; that is, each representation of the Crucifixion is viewed as part of a series of episodes from Scripture, not as an individual subject for isolated contemplation. The two images are well-known to art-historians and are pictured together on Plate 5. Both are carved reliefs, one in ivory and the other in cedar, and were probably executed in Rome in the first half of the fifth centuryt both portray Jesus alive, nailed to the cross but standing firmly against rather than hanging from it. In essence, both images accentuate his transcendence over physical pain, thereby making explicit the focus of the early Christian Church on the Crucifixion as a means of celebrating Jesus' triumph over death, a triumph subsequently fulfilled in the Resurrection. The nascent history of the Crucifixion image as it is understood here closes just over a century later in the eastern part of the Roman Empire when the pictorial type of the triumphal Jesus enters a new phase in its development, beginning its rise as the pivotal image of Christianity. The stretch of some five hundred years thus covered in this thesis falls predominantly within the epoch designated as Late Antique, those centuries between around AD 200 to about 750 in which the Mediteffanean world underwent profound social and cultural change.2 It is important to define at the outset what is meant in this study by an "image" of the Crucifixion. Essentially, the word image is used to refer to a pictorial representation of Jesus' crucifixion in which he hangs on his cross in the presence of those characters and/or subsidiary events mentioned in the four canonical Gospel accounts of the Passion. All four accounts, the earliest being created by 2 The boundaries of the historical period tend to shift slightly. Peter Brown (1989), sets them at AD 150-750, covering the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180) up to the post-Justinianic period. See also Brown (199S), p. 1. For the discussion of Late Antiquity as a distinct period between 250 and 800: Bowersock, Brown & Grabar (L999), introduction pp. vii-xiii. 2 Introduclion Mark sometime around AD 70,3 begin with the conspiracy against Jesus [Mt. 26:l-5 Mk 14:I-2;Lk. 22:I-21and extend to the finding of the empty tomb [Mt. 28:1-10; Mk 16:1-8; Lk. 24:l-l2l,a thereby encompassing his death. An image of the Crucifixion is thus distinct from a crucifix. Strictly speaking a crucifix is a cross bearing the fully modelled body of Jesus which functions as an isolated or independent instrument of devotion.s Hence the cross Macrina wore is not a crucifix, as it has been mistakenly described.6 Crucifixes are unknown in Late Antiquity and are rare in Byzantine art, their development in the sense of bearing a three dimensional figure coming much later.l Since Christian artistic expression can be seen to begin in Rome around AD 200 with the painted decoration of the catacombs, the two fifth century images seem to document a remarkably slow appearance of the Crucifixion as a subject for visual representation. This slowness has proven notoriously difficult to explain. Mostly, the two reliefs are seen to come at the end of a period during which images of Jesus crucified were deliberately avoided. This deliberacy appears particularly pointed in the fourth century when pictorialised Passion narratives, or even single episodes from the narrative, appear on sarcophagi. Although providing an ideal context for the pictorialisation of the Crucifixion, the subject remained absent, In place of the Crucifixion, fourth century artists are seen to use several alternatives: antitypes or typological parallels from the Old Testament to allude to the event, such as the Sacrifice of Isaac on the Junius Bassus sarcophagus;8 symbolic 'Green (1988), p. 160; Green's monograph, The Death of Jesus, provides a detailed study of the Passion narrative. a Throckmorton (1967), pp. 163-188. t This disti.rction is stipulated by Smith & Cheetham (1875), v. I p. 5I2, and Maskell (1905), p. 246.Plain pre-fifth century crosses are still mistakenly termed crucifixes: eg. Drijvers (1992),p. 90, calls Macrina's cross a crucifix; there is no indication from Gregory's description that this cross carried a figural representation of Jesus. Similarly Taylor (1993), pp. I22-I23, uses the word cross and crucifix interchangeably when discussing the literary evidence for the erection of a cornnemorative cross on Golgotha: yet there is no indication that such a cross, whether erected by Constantine or subsequent individuals, bore a figural representation of Jesus. u Plain pre-fifth century crosses are still mistakenly termed crucifixes: eg. Drijvers (1992), p. 90, calls Macrina's cross a crucifix; there is no indication from Gregory's description that this cross carried a figural representation of Jesus. Similarly Taylor (1993), pp. 122-123, uses the word cross and crucifix interchangeably when discussing the literary evidence for the erection of a commemorative cross on Golgotha: yet there is no indication that such a cross, whether erected by Constantine or subsequent individuals, bore a figural representation of Jesus. 7 One of the finest early examples is the Gero cross in Cologne Cathedral, c. 960-965: Schiller (1e72), fig. 455. t Malbon (1990), pp 44-47, fig. 1 & diag. 8.1, showing compositional links. -t