Ceremony & setting in the Sacraments

FIRST PART of 

Copy of Chapter IV from ‘NICOLAS POUSSIN & THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS’ 1968. PhD thesis ,

University

of

Edinburgh

, by Anthony S.G.Green. With new notes & comments in [  ]. The gist of the original footnotes, sometimes rather perfunctory, are included in the text in { }.

I have corrected one or two errors in spelling and grammar without comment. In the normal process of thesis writing, these would have been corrected before the manuscript was submitted. In respect of this, I should note that entirely contrary to present practice, my supervisors, Giles Robertson and David Talbot-Rice were supervisors in name only. I had only one formal meeting, with David Talbot-Rice, in which I asked him for guidance in the literature on early Christian art. Apart from occasional informal discussion with Giles Robertson, at lunch-time, I received no suggestions from them of directions or procedures; and no reading of my manuscript prior to its submission. 

3 May 05

CEREMONY AND SETTING IN THE SACRAMENTS.

1. Introduction.

Bosio’s ‘Roma Sotterranea’ [Rome, 1632. Possible borrowings by Poussin from its images and text were discussed in Chapter III]  was a product of only one current in the stream of Counter-Reformation thought. There were several others, which also affected Poussin’s religious painting. Not only was he aware of the newly excavated monuments of Christian antiquity, he also made use of literary material for the reconstruction of early Christian ‘costume’, especially in the paintings of “Eucharist’ and ‘Penitence’.

The traditions on which he drew had their origins in the Counter-Reformation. The religious controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a most important stimulus to the study of antiquity. It was clear that the only true Faith could be that which was intended by the Gospels, the acts, and whatever could be learned of the practices and beliefs of the early Church. There was an intense interest in all aspects of Christian antiquity. Patristic writing, historical, canonical, and mystical was explored with great vigour, in the search for evidence. The Council of Trent had defined the proper means for interpretation of the fundamental document, the Bible. The only authority was the consensus of the opinion of the Fathers of the Church. Biblical commentary flourished, and two kinds of study flourished with it: typology and antiquarianism. The mystical interpretations of patristic writing were cited in detail. The exploration of all available ancient monuments and all ancient writers, pagan and Christian alike, was pressed into service to explain references to ceremony, dress and all the other aspects of life in antiquity. 

All antiquity was scoured for information. Even the wroks of Julian the Apostate were translated and edited. The second of these editions in

France

was made by a Jesuit, Denis Petau (Petavius). Julian the Apostate was a hero of the ‘libertins’, a man who had contrived to acquire Virtù 4, without the help of Christianity. He was an author who should perhaps have been edited by the ‘libertin’ Saumaise (Salmasius), rather than by his rival in controversy, Petau, “le Saumaise catholique”. {Pierre Gaudibert. Poussin et le Neo-Stoïcisme.

Europe

, , 1959, pp 27 ff. } Two prefaces did their best to justify the publication of these unchristian works. His writing, they claimed was now of the past, rendered harmless by the passage of time, and contained much important information about early Chritsina life and belief. Cassiano dal Pozzo took this up as his own excuse, if excuse were needed, for his collection, the ‘Museum Cartaceum’ which contained so many drawings of objects related to “the false opinions of the ancients as regards the Deity”. {Jacques Vanuxem. Les “Tableaux Sacrés” de Richeôme  et l’iconographie de l”Eucharistie chez Poussin. Actes du Colloque Poussin, 1960, pp.151.ff}

It was plain to the writers of this period that pagan and Christian antiquity were closely related. Pagan and Christian ritual, ceremony and symbolism belonged together in the same broad scheme of religious history, the history of redemption, unified by the eternity of the Godhead. It was widely believed that there had been a partial revelation of the nature of the Divine Being to the pagans and to the Jews. {Council of

Trent

, On sacraments in general. Sess.VII.Canons 3 and 4. J.Mansi. Sacroum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio.

Venice

, 1798. Facsimile,

Paris

and

Leipzig

, 1906. XXXIII. Col.52}.  The Egyptians in particular had had the Trinity revealed to them by the patriarch Joseph, but had reverted to pagan worship. The position of the pagans was thus seen as a highly ambiguous one. On the one hand traces of Divine revelation and a  corresponding wisdom could be discerned in their symbolism and worship, on the other they were the personification of misguided idolatry. The Jews had been presented with a revelation which they were unable to understand, and instead of seeing God’s promise fulfilled, they had been bound under the unbearable yoke of the Law. In th Law and in the events of the Old Testament were concealed the mysteries of the new dispensation, revealed only by Christ. 

This view of history made it possible to interpret antique symbolism and hieroglyphs as representations of Christian truth that had not been completely understood by the pagans. The Old Testament could be interpreted in the same way with respect to the Jews. The patristic systems of typology were thus perpetuated side by side with the humanistic tradition of interpretation of ancient religion. Antique ritual and worship in this system foreshadowed the Christian religion which had in the end superceded it.

There was no question of comparing pagan religion and Christianity on equal terms for Christians in this period. There was no modern concept of a collective unconscious to explain away Christianity as a manifestation akin to all other religious manifestations. Even the skepticism of the ‘libertins’ and the search for a moral law in nature or in reason had not undermined this system of belief by the mid-seventeenth century for the vast majority of writers.

The antiquarian tradition in which Poussin’s ‘sacraments’ lie is that of the Counter-Reformation. The triclinium motif was largely the preserve of the Jesuits. Msny of Poussin’;s religious pictures still depend on the typology that the biblical commentators revived. The hieroglyphs that he introduced, especially the ‘E’ on the pillar in ‘Ordination II’ have a specifically Christian significance. All thee aspects enrich the meaning of his pictures, antiquarianism, typology and symbolism.

[The breadth of this brief introduction to the chapter depended on generalization from a mass of 16^th and 17^th reading I had undertaken in the University Library, which was rich in books of the period. Citation of sources and a more detailed argument – as desirable as they seem now -- would have exceeded the bounds of my thesis and become a study in its own right. At that time, it was possible to borrow a key to the book cupboards and browse through the pre-19^th century books in the beautiful Upper Library Hall designed by Playfair. I took full advantage of this. There was no difficulty about borrowing these books, other than the great weight of the large folios of Biblical commentary. During the weeks in which I completed my thesis I had about twenty of these 16^th and 17^th century books on my desk to refer to as I wrote.]

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