Ceremony & Setting in th Sacraments, V

Part V. Poussin and the false worship of the pagans.

[Continuing with this retrospective of Chapter IV of my 1968 thesis, I remember it as striking out in a new direction – away from the narrowly constricting view that I found everywhere of Poussin as Stoic, as Rational, as Classicist, & Poussin as having little serious interest in Christian themes. Keyboarding it I will be interested to see how far this is borne out, how far the nature of the biblical and antiquarian commentary as fundamentally tied to Counter-Reformation interests, still seems to be convincing as Poussin’s context for his religious paintings. Much as I admired the then new work of Charles Dempsey on Poussin in Egypt, I also thought that, as later in relation to the “E’ on the Pillar in Ordination II, the lack of knowledge of this context had misled him in his interpretation of the Hermitage Rest on the Flight into Egypt.]

The use of antiquarian motifs, like the triclinium, resulted in greater ‘decorum’ in Poussin’s pictures than in those of his predecessors. They were seen by Roland de Chambray in 1662 as enhancing the religious significance of the Eucharist and the Penitence of the second set of Sacraments. His conclusions are those of criticism of the arts, while his arguments depend on the exegetical tradition of the writers on the feasts of the Bible. There are other uses of antique imagery in the Sacraments and in Poussin’s Moses pictures. These have been taken as evidence that Poussin ‘rationalised’ his Biblical Gospel stories. He did not subject pagan and Christian beliefs to rational scrutiny in order to demythologize them, as has been suggested.{C.Dempsey. Poussin and Egypt. Art bulletin, XLV, 1963, p117}. On the contrary, he packed his pictorial images more and more densely with symbolism drawn from many sources, some Christian, some apparently pagan, in an attempt to elucidate the spiritual sense of his subjects. To be sure, the structure of his painting becomes increasingly lucid and orderly in the late 1640s and early 1650s. This is not so much a symptom of a deep-seated rationalism, as a concomitant of an increasing tendency to represent and ideal and remote world. Unlike many seventeenth century painters he was not intent upon creating the illusion of a familiar reality in his pictures, either in subject or in symbolism.

That Poussin made use of hieroglyphs is well-known. His own seal contained one. {Confidentia derived from Ripa’s Iconolgia, not from Cartari as stated by Bellori. 1728, p288.See Blunt, The paintings of Nicolas Poussin, Text. 1967. p17 & n67.} There are two in the Sacraments. In Penitence I in the middle ground there is the hieroglyph of a right hand extended with an eye in the palm. In Ordination II there is the ‘E’ on the pillar on the left.

The hieroglyphs were believed in the renaissance to have originated in Egypt. They were intended [or so it was believed] as a secret writing which was invented by the priests to protect the mysteries of their religion from profanation by the ignorant. These hieroglyphs were adapted to create a symbolism which was adopted by numerous writers and artists in the Renaissance. The most famous compendium of hieroglyphs was that of Pierio Valeriano. {Hieroglyphica. Lyon, 1556. Frankfort edition, as Hieroglyphicum collectanea, 1614}. His book was widely used for reference on the subject for two centuries. Although in origin the hieroglyphs were pagan, in Pierio’s usage, and in that of the Renaissance generally they were on the hazy border-line between Christian and profane. [The distinction in religion was clear, but the same pagan symbols reappeared in Christian monuments] Along with the monuments of antiquity, the study of ancient languages, ritual and history, they were first used to enrich the Christian tradition, rather than to undermine it. It was not in this, but in the study of ancient philosophy, both moral and natural, that the rationalist tradition had its roots. Pierio cites pagan and Christian authors in the same breath, and evidently saw no danger in so doing.

Ancient religion itself, as has been said, was connected with the Christian religion by current views of history. Egypt, where the hieroglyphs had their origin was of the utmost significance. It was well-known that the Egyptian religious mysteries, especially those of Isis, had influenced the religion of the Hellenistic world, and were thus the source of many of the mysteries of Roman religion. The connection was very apparent to antiquarians in the seventeenth century, who were surrounded by the remains of late antiquity, with its numerous references to the mysteries. Hence, the study of Roman ritual and religious belief was one way of penetrating the earliest mysteries of the ancient world. The study of these objects [?], with their mixed rites ands inherent syncretism, provided the basis for seventeenth century syncretist views of the pagan deities, these were particularly common in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. {See C.Dempsey.The classical perception of nature in Poussin’s earlier works. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1966, pp 219-249,  especially pp233-241, where he makes a brilliant analysis of the fundamental attitudes to antiquity of the Barberini circle. I am greatly indebted to this article, which complements many of my own findings.} This view of pagan religion was enclosed within the formulation of world history to which I have already referred. Dempsey quoted a highly significant passage from Aleandro, in which it is clear that history was considered as the history of redemption. He shared this view with many contemporaries and predecessors, like Pierio Valeriano in the sixteenth century, and Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit writer on hieroglyphs, Casale, severani and,no doubt, many others.

Within this system many symbols and hieroglyphs familiar in the Christian religion had been known to the ancients. Thus the Chi Rho, the Scarab and the Cross, were all known to have existed in the pagan world. It was realised that many pagan practices had ben adopted by the early Christians and given a new significance. The catacombs and the sarcophagi contained numerous examples, like that of Orpheus in the catacomb pictures. Instead of arguing that this was merely a question of cultural continuity, Severani and his contemporaries pointed to further, more subtle reasons for the reappearance of pagan symbols in a Christian context.

Severani’s comments on the Chi Rho are of considerable interest. After remarking that it signifies Christ, he goes on to point out that although it is generally said to have originated with Constantine, whom was the first to place it on the shields of his soldiers and thereafter defeated Maxentius, it had in fact been used earlier. It had been found on sepulchral monuments that went back at least to the time of Diocletian. Not only was it used by Christians but by pagans, “e fù ancora questa trà li Ieroglifici de gli Egitti”. It had been noticed on Ptolemaic coins and various interpretations had been given to the pagan symbolism. In particular the presence of the Cross part of the hieroglyph was important, “e se bene quelli si servivano di simili note per altri significati: Dio però le preordinava à tali fini,  misterii: volendo che queste medesime adombrassero la Croce, & il Crocifisso; così posiamo dire di tutte le alter cose trasportate dall Gentilità al Christianesimo…” {Bosio, op.cit.p630}.Thus the Chi Rho on the shield in Extreme Unction II was originally such a hieroglyph and denotes that the dying man was an early Christian soldier, perhaps a soldier of Constantine.

The scholars of the seventeenth century attributed extraordinary knowledge to the Egyptians. Other symbols were also thought to have had mystery significance for the Egyptians. Thus Kircher followed St Augustine’s interpretation of the Scarab and elaborated it into a complex Christian meaning, cited at length by G.B.Casale in his study of Egyptian rites. {De veteribus Aegyptiorum Ritibus. Rome , 1645. Cited from Hanover, 1681 edition. Cf also Valeriano, op.cit. pp 93-94, who also quotes St Augustine’s interpretation of the Scarab and arrives at similar interpretation by a different route.} It was believed that the scarab had no mortal father, but was born of dung. For Kircher he was a symbol of the only begotten Son of God, who had not disdained to take on lowly human flesh.

For Casale, as for many others, the Egyptians had possessed great arts and had spread these throughout the ancient world.{Casale, op.cit.pp21-23.} They had also been the originators of idolatry and they had spread this too, by conquest. {Ibid.p17}. They had preserved their mysteries in hieroglyphs, but the inventor of these was hotly disputed. Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus were the two chief claimants. {Ibid.p26} It was also claimed that the Jews had learnt a great deal from the wisdom of the Egyptians as well as from their idolatry. Moses had learnt the symbol of the Cross from them. He exhibited this in the form of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness as a sign of Salvation. {Ibid.p30} The Egyptians were believed to have inscribed the cross, often in the form of a Tau on the surviving obelisks. They had apparently attached a significance to it which was not very remote from the Christian one. Casale cites a passage from Socrates’ History of the Church I  which it appears that the Cross was found in the temple of Serapis when it was destroyed by Theodosius. The Cross was supposed to signify ‘Future Life” to the pagans and thereby many were converted to the Christian faith, because of the similarity with the Christian meaning. It was also a symbol of the Egyptian god, Serapis. {The passage is cited by Cardinal Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, Rome, 1590. cited from Paris, 1864-1880 edition, VI, p54. Spondanus, n.16. Casale, opp.cit. p.28. Cornelis à Lapide, op.cit. pp286-289. The last of these authors discusses the problem at great length.}

The identity of Serapis was arrived at by the rules of the ancient game of etymology, in which any kind of word-play, however improbable, was allowed. His identification is of some interest, since the interpretation of Poussin’s Rest on the flight into Egypt [Hermitage] depends on it. This picture is analogous in many ways to Ordination II. Both are patently full of mysteries, both use a curious mixture of Christian and pagan symbols and as it happens both have been interpreted in roughly similar ways. 

There were three important traditions which co-existed in the seventeenth century. On the one hand Serapis was supposed to have been Apis, King of the Argives, whose sarcophagus was venerated by the Egyptians. The word for sarcophagus was ‘soros’ and hence the name of the God gradually mutated from ‘Sorosapis’ to ‘Serapis’. Thius was the tradition that was well-known from St Augustine. The second was derived from Plutarch, the essence of which was that Serapis was a bull-god, the resurrected form of Osiris. The third was to be found in a little treatise written by the early /cghristian apologist, Julius Firmicus Maternus, [De errore profanarum religionum]. The treatise was frequently reprinted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the light it shed on early customs among the Christians in Rome. According to this author, the Egyptians had erected a temple to the patriarch Joseph, in gratitude for his having saved them from starvation in the seven years of famine. Joseph was Sarah’s grandson and therefore called ‘Sarae Pronepos’. By even more extraordinary mutations than those by which St Augustine arrived at the name, ‘Sarae Pronepos’ became ‘Serapis’. Joseph, it appears, was thought to have introduced the Doctrine of the Trinity to the Egyptians, since one of the oracles of Serapis was supposed to have mentioned God as three persons: ‘Principio Deus est, tumVerbum, his spiritus unus,/Congenita haec tria sunt, cuncta haec tendentia in unum.

All this was quoted at length by Baronius and Cornelis à Lapide.{Baronius, op.cit. VI, p.54, Cornelis à Lapide,op.cit. pp286-289 and Casale, op.cit. p28}. Casale summarized their opinions in his study of Egyptian rites. Further it was held that Serapis signified ‘Salvator Mundi’. This was highly credible to seventeenth century writers. They knew that Jospeh was a type of Christ, in that he had suffered and eventually triumphed. Cornelis à Lapide devoted several pages to this typological allegory. It was not in the slightest bit surprising that Joseph should be worshipped and regarded as ‘Salvator Mundi’. The identification with the Argive King was also made explicitly by  Cornelis à Lapide. Joseph and Apis were exact contemporaries, he claimed.

Since Joseph fed the Egyptians, he must have understood the flooding of the Nile, which was the source of fertility in Egypt. The Egyptian bull-god was the symbol of this fertility. Rufinus quoted by Baronius remarks that the Egyptians measured the Nile at the temple of Serapis, whom they thought  was the author of the rising of the waters. To show that it was not the false god Serpais, but the True God who was their author, the greatest flood in living memory occurred after the destruction of the temple of Serapis by Theodosius. The Nilometer was carried off to the church, presumably for use as a font. {Baronius, op.cit. VI, p53}. This would have been highly appropriate, since thy could have dispensed grace from the ancient symbol of grace.

Thus both ‘Soros Apin’ and ‘Sarae Pronepos’ were the same, Argive King and Hebrew Patriarch fused together.   

It was not grain that Joseph gave the Egyptians, but allegorically, the Doctrine of the True God. [This summary is typical. Casale, op.cit., p49.’Certe non frumentum tantum, sed veram Dei cognitionem Ioseph tradidiisse Aegyptiis, satis afferitur in Psal.104. dum ait Pharoanem: constituisse eum Dominum domus suae, ut erudiret Principes sicut semetipsum’, ut iure dici posuit eam de sacrosancta Trinitate Sententiam fuisse Iosephi: Traduntque insuper à serapi inventa esse Symbola, quaedam, quibus ab obsessis Deaemone pellerentur, quod Hebraeoruum sapientiae convenit, apud Spondanum.d.n.16.] This Doctrine [as these seventeenth century texts continue] was rapidly forgotten and turned to the purposes of idolatrous worship. Thus, when Moses came to Egypt, he was educated in the arts of the Egyptians, which, according to Plutarch, had been taught by Serapis, or according to others, by Hermes Trismegistus. Moses was, however, educated in the profane arts on the one hand, but in Hebrew doctrine by his mother. Thus, he later denied that he was Pharoah’s son. Cornelis à Lapide asserted that Hermes Trismegistus belonged to a later period of time than Moses, implying that Moses could have learnt nothing of value from the Egyptians. { Cornelis à Lapide, op.cit. p346}. Ficino had edited Hermes Trismegistus in the sixteenth century. He professed a great admiration for this ‘Egyptian’ philosopher, who he believed had written at  a period of remote antiquity. He had received some measure of Revelation also, since, according to Ficino, he ahd expounded the doctrine of the Trinity. {Ficino’s edition of Mercurii Trismegistus Poemander – I used the edition of Paris, 1554}. If Hermes Trismegistus lived before Moses, or even about the same time, it could follow that Moses might have learnt not only pagan arts, but Divine Truth in Egypt. If, on the other hand, Hermes Trismegoistus was born after Moses, then taught the Egyptians, Moses could have learnt nothing from them except pagan philosophy. {The question of chronology was therefore of great importance and occupied the time and attention of several scholars.}

When Poussin finished work on the Rest on the Flight into Egypt he wrote to Chantelou of the Egyptian details he had put into it, not for any particular symbolic reasons, but to show that the scene was in Egypt and for the novelty of it. {Letter of 25 November, 1658}. Dempsey, when discussing the picture, the letter and the iconography, remarked that Poussin was obviously telling less than the truth. {Dempsey, op.cit.p113}.In this leter, Pousin refers to “Soros Apin’ who was to be sure, the Egyptian bull-god, the King of the Argives. Dempsey was well aware of this. Whatever form of the name Poussin used, however, he can only acquired his detailed knowledge of the items in his picture from contemporary scholarship. In so doing he would not have failed to encounter the alternative etymologies for the name, and the interpretation as ‘Salvator Mundi’. This would have been most likely, since he was evidently aware of contemporary Biblical commentary. Even turning to Suarez’s ‘Praeneste Antiquae’, Dempsey quoted the passage referring to Serapis. In this the ‘Sarae Pronepos’ etymology follows the ‘Soros Apin’ variant. Demposey made no comment whatever on the appearance of the phrase ‘Sarae Pronepos’, but it is this etymology which provides the connection between Christ in Egypt [in the foreground] and the scene of the Egyptian worship in the middle ground of the picture. The mythology of Serapis was not confined to pagan interpretation, as Dempsey supposed, but had in it the germ of revelation, fulfilled by the presence of Christ. In the background there is a view of a city (a mediaeval city according to Dempsey) with a tower surmounted but a Cross. The Cross is not simply a Christian symbol, but a symbol adopted from pagan worship, signifying Serapis, ‘Salvator Mundi’. This city is not, as Dempsey supposed, the symbol of Christianity afterChrist, but the symbol of Serapis, the type of the true Salvator Mundi.

The Christian scene in the foreground is in completer harmony with the Serapis scene in the [middle ground and] background. It was said by commentators and historians that Christ had descended into Egypt to destroy idolatry at its source. There is no sign here of a broken idol. According to Baronio the destruction of the idols signified the penitence of the inhabitants of Egypt. Not all, he continued, were penitent, for Theodosius had had to destroy the idolatrous temple of Serapis at a later date [389 C.E] . {Baronius, I, p13.} The ceremony in Ooussin’s picture can only indicate the Egyptians worshipping at the temple of  ‘Sarae Pronepos’, Joseph, the type of Christ, who had revealed the True God to them and brought fertility to them during the years of famine. In this sense Chriotst hads come to restore their original worship ofmthe Truwe God, or to fulfill the partial revelation to the pagans. In this picture they are bringing food and water to the Holy Family, in the place of the tradtional angels, signifying their worship of Christ.

In the foreground the ass drinks from the nilometer. Like Joseph, the ass is a symbol of Christian patience. {Valeriano, op.cit. p146}. The true Christian in this picture is rewarded with water from the well, [actually a near-overflowing nilometer, not a well. The comparison I made with Eliezer has here been deleted]. Here the ass is receiving water that symbolized the fertility created by the flooding of the Nile, due, as Rufinus had pointed out, to the grace of the True God. Poussin seems to have restored the nilometer to its original place, beside the temple, but given it its Christian baptismal function.

Dempsey noticed that none of the writers on the Palestrina mosaic, the source of the visual imagery for the Serapis rite in the picture, had been interpreted as such in detail by seventeenth century antiquarians. He suggested that this was Poussin’s contribution to antiquarian thought. This supposes that Poussin thought of the imagery at Palestrina first and then worked a picture round it. It is more likely that he arrived at the ‘concetto’ of the picture, in its allegorical complexity from his reading of Baronius, Casale and the rest, and then searched for imagery by which to represent it. It would be an easy step to the imagery of the mosaic, his idea, since it was a major source of Egyptian antiquities in a general sense. Thus the temples and procession of priests were ideally useful pictorial images for this purpose.

This picture contains antiquarian material, hieroglyphs and religious history and typology. These co-exist easily in Poussin’s picture because of the fundamental inter-relation of all historical and mythical, Christian and pagan, material for Poussin and his contemporaries. 

[In retrospect, this text seems to me to outline the contemporary context of antiquarianism and Egypt, with its insistent religious views, which are quite distinct from the scientific and rational archaeology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The interpretation is, in the end, not as fully discussed as I would now like it to be. Nevertheless, as soon as the picture is related to the religio-antiquarianism of Poussin’s time, the Egyptian antiquities begin to make a rather different sense, than that which is  in Dempseys’ otherwise useful discussion of 1963].

<a href=http://technorati.com/tag/Poussin/%27s+Humour  rel="tag">Poussin/'s Humour</a>

<a href=http://technorati.com/tag/Poussin rel="tag">Poussin</a>

Comments

[Tendence 時計 メンズ]

I know this if off topic but I'm looking into starting my own weblog and was wondering what all is needed to get setup? I'm assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I'm not very web smart so I'm not 100% certain. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Appreciate it
[url=http://www.sbangkok.com/【tendence】-テンデンス-jp-65.html]Tendence 時計 メンズ[/url]

[カシオ 時計白casio 時計 女性]

Greetings from Carolina! I'm bored to death at work so I decided to check out your blog on my iphone during lunch break. I enjoy the info you provide here and can't wait to take a look when I get home. I'm shocked at how fast your blog loaded on my cell phone .. I'm not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyways, good blog!
カシオ 時計白casio 時計 女性 http://www.tokeiwatchjp.com/その他casio-jp-19.html

[http://watches.thompsongf.com/Tags.html]

Hi! Someone in my Myspace group shared this site with us so I came to give it a look. I'm definitely loving the information. I'm bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my followers! Excellent blog and fantastic design.
http://watches.thompsongf.com/Tags.html http://watches.thompsongf.com/

[マークバイマークジェイコブス 時計]

Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the images aren't loading properly. I'm not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I've tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same results.
マークバイマークジェイコブス 時計 http://www.mtokei.com/マークバイマークジェイコブス—marc-by-marc-jacobs-nihon-17.html

[テンデンス 時計 レディース]

I’m not that much of a online reader to be honest but your blogs really nice, keep it up! I'll go ahead and bookmark your website to come back in the future. All the best
テンデンス 時計 レディース http://www.tokei-jp.com/tendenceテンデンス-時計-nihon-9.html

[人気MARC BY MARC JACOBS腕時計]

Heya! I'm at work surfing around your blog from my new iphone 4! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the outstanding work!
人気MARC BY MARC JACOBS腕時計 http://www.goodyonline-watch.com/ordj45d-marc-by-marc-jacobs.html

[www.bioagritest.com]

I'm really loving the theme/design of your web site. Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility issues? A handful of my blog visitors have complained about my website not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Opera. Do you have any advice to help fix this problem?
www.bioagritest.com http://www.bioagritest.com/

[www.turuyabag.com]

Does your blog have a contact page? I'm having trouble locating it but, I'd like to shoot you an e-mail. I've got some creative ideas for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it grow over time.
www.turuyabag.com http://www.turuyabag.com/

[セリーヌ バッグ 大人気]

Howdy, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam responses? If so how do you reduce it, any plugin or anything you can recommend? I get so much lately it's driving me insane so any assistance is very much appreciated.
セリーヌ バッグ 大人気 http://www.vipsanalpha.com/celine-heise