This book is the first time Hildegard’s writings appeared in English. In selecting, translating, and adapting the material for it, Uhlein worked from the German critical editions of De Operatione Dei (1965), Liber Vitae Meritorum (1972), and Hildegard’s letters (Briefweschel) (1965) and songs (Lieder) (1969), all published by Otto Müller Verlag in Salzburg.
For the original Latin of the above hymn and a more straightforward translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell, see here. This link also includes a musical performance of the Latin (Hildegard wrote her own lyrics and music!).
Hildegard of Bingen, OSB, (ca. 1098–1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, theologian, preacher, poet, composer, playwright, and medical writer and practitioner. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen and was named a “doctor of the church” by Pope Benedict XVI in recognition of “her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.” Hildegard’s most significant works are her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias (Know the Ways) (for which she also supervised miniature illuminations), the Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), and the Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works). But she is also well known for her liturgical hymns and antiphons, as well as the many letters she wrote to popes, emperors, abbots, abbesses, fellow mystics, and layfolk, dispensing wisdom and advice.
Gabriele Uhlein, OSF, (born 1952) is a retreat guide, workshop leader, and artist dedicated to the recovery of the Christian mystical tradition and the honoring of intuition and creativity in spiritual deepening. Born in Klingenberg, Germany, she emigrated to the US at age two. She has a PhD in process theology and Jungian-oriented psychology from Chicago Theological Seminary and is a member of the core staff at the Christine Center, a natural sanctuary in Willard, Wisconsin, rooted in the Franciscan principles of contemplation, hospitality, compassion, simplicity, transformation, and care for the earth.
WORLD PREMIERE: “Yr Oedd Gardd / There Was a Garden” by Alex Mills, March 29, 2024, Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral, Bangor, Wales: On Good Friday this year, a new setting of seven unpublished R. S. Thomas poems, curated from the archives of the R. S. Thomas Research Centre, will be performed for the first time by Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral Choir under the direction of Joe Cooper, accompanied by devotional readings. The choral composition is by Alex Mills [previously], and it was commissioned by Saint Deiniol’s for Holy Week. The title comes from John 19:41–42: “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”
Thomas was a priest in the Church of Wales and one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, his works exploring the cross, the presence and absence of God, forgiveness, and redemption.
This is the second commission Mills has fulfilled for the cathedral; last year he wrote “Saith Air y Groes / Seven Last Words from the Cross,” a choral setting of the seven short phrases uttered by Jesus from the cross, according to the Gospel writers, but in Welsh.
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CONTEMPORARY HYMNS/GOSPEL SONGS BY WOMEN:
I try to be intentional about featuring the work of women throughout the year, but as March is Women’s History Month, I wanted to call attention to these three sacred songs by Christian women from the generation or two before me.
>> “Christ Jesus Knew a Wilderness” by Jane Parker Huber (1986): Born in China to American Presbyterian missionaries, Jane Parker Huber (1926–2008) is best known as a hymn writer and an advocate for women in the church. This hymn—which can be found in A Singing Faith (1987), among other songbooks—is particularly suitable for Lent. Huber wrote the words, pairing them with an older tune by George J. Elvey. Lucas Gillan, a drummer, educator, church music director, composer, and occasional singer-songwriter from Chicago and founding member of the jazz quartet Many Blessings, arranged the hymn and performs it here with his wife, Anna Gillan, a project commissioned by Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Walnut Creek, California. What a great violin part!
Christ Jesus knew a wilderness Of noonday heat and nighttime cold Of doubts and hungers new and old Temptation waiting to take hold
Christ Jesus knew uncertainty Would all forsake, deny, betray? Would crowds that followed turn away? Would pow’rs of evil hold their sway?
Christ Jesus knew an upper room An olive grove, a judgment hall A skull-like hill, a drink of gall An airless tomb bereft of all
Christ Jesus in our wilderness You are our bread, our drink, our light Your death and rising set things right Your presence puts our fears to flight
>> “For Those Tears I Died (Come to the Water)” by Marsha Stevens-Pino (1969): I grew up in an independent Baptist church in the southern US, and though the worship music consisted almost entirely of traditional hymns, I have a faint recollection of a woman singing this song as an offertory one Sunday. (Or maybe I heard it on a Gaithers’ television special at my grandma’s house?) It is an early CCM (contemporary Christian music) song that was popular with the emerging Jesus Movement. Marsha Stevens-Pino (née Carter) (born 1952) of Southern California wrote it in 1969 when she was sixteen and a brand-new Christian, and it was recorded by Children of the Day in 1971.
In the video below, excerpted from the DVD Stories and Songs, vol. 1, it is sung by Callie DeSoto and Maggie Beth Phelps with their father, David Phelps.
>> “The First One Ever” by Linda Wilberger Egan (1980): An alumna of the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music with a background in voice and organ, Linda Wilberger Egan (born 1946) has served Lutheran, United Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations as music director throughout her career. Based on Luke 1:26–38, John 4:7–30, and Luke 24:1–11, her hymn “The First One Ever” honors the gospel witness of biblical women: Mother Mary, who said yes to God’s plan for her life, bearing the Messiah into the world; the unnamed woman of Samaria, who, after Jesus personally revealed his messianic identity to her, evangelized her whole village; and Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, the first people to receive the news of Jesus’s resurrection and to preach it to the apostles.
The hymn is sung in the following video by Lauren Gagnon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Chenango Bridge, New York, accompanied by her husband, Jacob Gagnon, on guitar.
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SUBSTACK POST: “St. Gabriel to Mary flies / this is the end of snow & ice” by Kristin Haakenson: Kristin Haakenson, creator of Hearthstone Fables, is an artist, farmer, and mom from the Pacific Northwest who shares art and reflections inspired by the sacred and the seasonal, place and past. In this most recent post of hers, she discusses the yearly intersection of Lent and the Feast of the Annunciation. “In a time when the Annunciation isn’t celebrated as universally within the Church as it once was, it may feel somewhat disjointed to stumble upon this joyful feast – celebrating the conception of Jesus – during the penitential season of Lent,” she writes. “This timing, though, is part of a revelatory harmony within the Christian calendar. When we step back to see it in the context of the rest of the liturgical year – and also in the context of the natural, astronomical seasons – the theology embedded in this system of sacred time begins to absolutely bloom.”
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LITURGICAL POEM: “Annunciation 2022” by Kate Bluett:Kate Bluett from Indiana writes metrical verse around the liturgical calendar and is also one of the lyricists of the Porter’s Gate music collective. In this poem (which she said was inspired in part by the timing of this blog post!) she brings the Annunciation into conversation with the Song of Solomon in such resonant ways.
Toros Taronatsi (Armenian, 1276–ca. 1346), The Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, 1323, from a Gospel-book made at Gladzor Monastery, Siunik, Armenia. MS 6289, fol. 143, Matenadaran Collection (Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts), Yerevan.
On Holy Saturday I’m planning to feature a song that connects the Song of Solomon to the women at Jesus’s tomb! If you haven’t read that Old Testament book or it’s been a while, I’d encourage you to do so, as then you’ll be able to more easily identify the references in Bluett’s poem and the upcoming song I’ve scheduled for the Paschal Triduum.
The English Crucifixion lyric “My Fearful Dream” (also known by the beginning of its first line, “To Calvary he bore his cross”) was written anonymously in the fifteenth century. It is preserved, with music by Gilbert Banastir (sometimes spelled Banaster or Banester) (ca. 1445–1487), on folios 77v–82r of the famous Tudor songbook BL Add. MS. 5465, intended for use at the court of King Henry VII. Compiled around the year 1500, this manuscript is commonly referred to as the Fayrfax Manuscript after Robert Fayrfax, the Tudor composer who was organist of St. Albans and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal—that is, an adult male singer in the monarch’s household choir. It contains twelve sacred songs and thirty-seven secular songs, all in English—with, “beyond question, the finest music written to vernacular words which survives from pre-Reformation England,” writes John Stevens in Early Tudor Songs and Carols (xvi). It is unknown whether the text or the music was written first.
In 1982 “My Fearful Dream” was performed by Pro Cantione Antiqua under the direction of Mark Brown at the Church of St. John-at-Hackney in London. The recording of this performance was originally released in 1985 in vinyl format on A Gentill Jhesu: Music from the Fayrfax Ms. and Henry VIII’s Book (Hyperion A66152) and was later reissued by Regis Records in 2006 on the CD Tears & Lamentations: English Renaissance Polyphony (RRC 1259). Unfortunately, the CD is out of print, the choral group is inactive, and I can find no performances online. I thus provide the recording of “My Fearful Dream” (or “My Fearfull Dreme,” as the track list spells it) directly below for educational purposes. It is a song for three voices: alto, tenor, bass.
Below is the original text as transcribed by Richard Leighton Greene from the Fayrfax Manuscript in The Early English Carols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), page 124, followed by a version with modernized spellings and updates of a few antiquated words. The text also appears in John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London: Methuen, 1961), no. 56, and the music in John Stevens, ed., Early Tudor Songs and Carols (Musica Britannica 36) (London: Stainer and Bell, 1975), page 476.
Pro Cantione Antiqua does not sing the third stanza.
Rogier van der Weyden (Netherlandish, 1399/1400–1464), The Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist Mourning, ca. 1460. Oil on panel, overall 71 × 73 in. (180.3 × 185 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Most people today use the word “carol” as synonymous with a cheerful Christmas song. But up until about 1550, the term was used for lyrics of a certain form rather than a certain subject or spirit. Greene defines the medieval or Renaissance carol as “a song on any subject, composed of uniform stanzas and provided with a burden . . . [that is,] an invariable line or group of lines which is to be sung before the first stanza and after all stanzas” (Early English Carols, xxxii–xxxiii). He distinguishes a burden from a refrain: “The refrain, as defined in this essay, is a repeated element which forms part of a stanza, in the carols usually the last line. The burden, on the other hand, is a repeated element which does not form any part of a stanza, but stands wholly outside the individual stanza-pattern” (clx).
That’s why “My Fearful Dream” can properly be called a carol. The two lines beginning “My fearful dream” open the song and repeat after each stanza.
My Feerfull Dreme
My feerfull dreme nevyr forgete can I: Methought a maydynys childe causless shulde dye.
To Calvery he bare his cross with doulfull payne, And theruppon straynyd he was in every vayne; A crowne of thorne as nedill sharpe shyfft in his brayne; His modir dere tendirly wept and cowde not refrayne. Myn hart can yerne and mylt When I sawe hym so spilt, Alas, for all my gilt, Tho I wept and sore did complayne To se the sharpe swerde of sorow smert, Hough it thirlyd her thoroughoute the hart, So ripe and endles was her payne.
My feerfull dreme . . .
His grevous deth and her morenyng grevid me sore; With pale visage tremlyng she strode her child before, Beholdyng ther his lymmys all to-rent and tore, That with dispaire for feer and dred I was nere forlore. For myne offence, she said, Her Son was so betraide, With wondis sore araid, Me unto grace for to restore: ‘Yet thou are unkynd, which sleith myn hert,’ Wherewith she fell downe with paynys so smert; Unneth on worde cowde she speke more.
My feerfull dreme . . .
Saynt Jhon than said, ‘Feere not, Mary; his paynys all He willfully doth suffir for love speciall He hath to man, to make hym fre that now is thrall.’ ‘O frend,’ she said, ‘I am sure he is inmortall.’ ‘Why than so depe morne ye?’ ‘Of moderly pete I must nedis wofull be, As a woman terrestriall Is by nature constraynyd to smert, And yet verely I know in myn hart From deth to lyff he aryse shall.’
My feerfull dreme . . .
Unto the cross, handes and feete, nailid he was; Full boistusly in the mortess he was downe cast; His vaynys all and synowis to-raff and brast; The erth quakyd, the son was dark, whos lyght was past, When he lamentable Cried, ‘Hely, hely, hely!’ His moder rufully Wepyng and wrang her handes fast. Uppon her he cast his dedly loke, Wherwith soddenly anon I awoke, And of my dreme was sore agast.
My feerfull dreme . . .
My Fearful Dream (modernized)
My fearful dream never forget can I: Methought a maiden’s child causeless should die.
To Calvary he bore his cross with doleful pain, And thereupon strained he was in every vein; A crown of thorns, sharp as needles, shoved in his brain. His mother dear tenderly wept and could not refrain. My heart did yearn and melt When I saw him so spilt, Alas, for all my guilt, And I wept and did sore complain To see the sharp sword of sorrow smart, How it pierced her straight through the heart, So ripe and endless was her pain.
My fearful dream never forget can I: Methought a maiden’s child causeless should die.
His grievous death and her mourning grieved me sore; With pale visage, trembling, she strode before her child, Beholding his limbs all rent and torn, That with despair for fear and dread I was near forlorn. For my offense, she said, Her Son was so betrayed, With wounds sore arrayed, Me unto grace for to restore: “Yet thou art unkind, which slayeth my heart,” Wherewith she fell down with pains so smart; Hardly one word could she speak more.
My fearful dream never forget can I: Methought a maiden’s child causeless should die.
Saint John then said, “Fear not, Mary; all his pains He willfully suffers for the special love He has to man, to make him free that’s now in thrall.” “O friend,” she said, “I am sure he is immortal.” “Why, then, do you mourn so deeply?” “Of motherly pity I needs must woeful be, As a terrestrial woman Is by nature constrained to smart, And yet verily I know in my heart From death to life he shall arise.”
My fearful dream never forget can I: Methought a maiden’s child causeless should die.
Unto the cross, hands and feet, he was nailed; Violently into the mortise he was cast down; His veins and sinews were all riven apart and burst; The earth quaked, the sun was dark, whose light was past, When he, lamenting, Cried, “Eli, Eli, Eli!” His mother was ruefully Weeping and wrung her hands fast. Upon her he cast his deathly look, Wherewith suddenly anon I awoke, And of my dream was sore aghast.
My fearful dream never forget can I: Methought a maiden’s child causeless should die.
The speaker of this carol has a dream—a nightmare—of Calvary, where he beholds the ignominious death of Jesus and the agonizing grief of Jesus’s mother and realizes that such suffering was undertaken for his sake, to save him from sin and its fatal consequences. The accusation that Mary hurls at the speaker in her hour of torment is biting: “You slay my heart!” My son is dead because of you. It’s such a humanizing passage, this expression of a mother’s anger at a death that didn’t have to be.
This is the Mater Dolorosa (Latin for “Sorrowful Mother”) of Christian tradition, who is sometimes depicted with a sword (or seven!) in her chest, literalizing Simeon’s prophecy to her as a teen and evoking the piercing sensation of losing a child. In Rogier van der Weyden’s Crucifixion diptych that I’ve reproduced here, created in roughly the same period as “My Fearful Dream” but in the Low Countries, there’s no sword, but Mary’s sorrow is evident in her tear-stained face, the wringing of her hands, and her literally collapsing under the unbearable weight of what she’s been asked to endure.
In the carol, the apostle John, present with Mary at the foot of the cross, catches her in her swoon and offers consolation, reassuring her that Jesus suffers willingly out of love. She responds that she knows it in her heart, and that she knows too that he will ultimately rise from death, but that that doesn’t diminish the sharpness of the pain she feels, deep in her body, watching her son shamed and wounded so.
The final image in the dream is of Jesus looking on his mother with a deathly pallor. With that, the speaker is jolted awake and sits with the horror.
On this side of the resurrection, it can be easy to breeze past Good Friday (“He didn’t stay dead!”) or to meditate on the Crucifixion only in a spiritual or theological sense. But this poem, this carol, sticks us in medias res, before the resurrection, into a physical human drama full of emotional intensity, so that we can feel what it might have been like to be present at the execution of the Son of God. Maybe you feel that the graphic details are gratuitous (the thorns shoved in his brain[!], his sinews riven apart, etc.), that sensory engagement with the scene is an exercise that fails to honor the bigger picture, and that it’s fruitless to generate pity for Christ or his mother, as the event is passed and what’s done is done. But centuries of faithful Christians have found otherwise: that meditating on Christ’s pain and that of his mother can help us better appreciate the real-life as opposed to merely mythic dimensions of the story and can cultivate in us a proper horror of sin and a deeper gratitude for Christ’s sacrifice.
The word “causeless” in the burden of the carol—the speaker sees a woman’s child dying without cause—does not imply that Jesus’s death served no purpose, but rather that he was put to death on wrongful charges. The Jewish tribunal charged him with blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God, and the Roman courts charged him with sedition, with inciting insurrection against the empire. But he was telling the truth about his identity and did so in ultimate reverence for God, not lack of it, and while the path he called his followers to would in some ways challenge the values of Rome and reorient ultimate loyalties, he never took up arms or encouraged his followers to do so (quite the contrary), and he never sought political power or overthrow.
Listen once more to Pro Cantione Antiqua’s performance of this carol as it would have been performed for the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, presumably in private religious services for him and his family. May the depths to which God went to save God’s beloved world be something you never can forget.
Vision of Saint Bernard (Blood Crucifix), by a nun from the Lower Rhine, 14th century. Ink and colored washes on paper, 25.5 × 18 cm. Museum Schnütgen, Cologne.
Jesu, no more! It is full tide; From thy hands and from thy feet, From thy head, and from thy side, All the purple rivers meet.
What need thy fair head bear a part In showers, as if thine eyes had none? What need they help to drown thy heart, That strives in torrents of its own?
Water’d by the showers they bring, The thorns that thy blest brow encloses (A cruel and a costly spring) Conceive proud hopes of proving roses.
Thy restless feet now cannot go For us and our eternal good, As they were ever wont. What though? They swim, alas! in their own flood.
Thy hand to give thou canst not lift, Yet will thy hand still giving be. It gives, but O, itself’s the gift, It gives though bound, though bound ’tis free.
But, O thy side, thy deep-digg’d side, That hath a double Nilus going: Nor ever was the Pharian tide Half so fruitful, half so flowing.
No hair so small, but pays his river To this Red Sea of thy blood; Their little channels can deliver Something to the general flood.
But while I speak, whither are run All the rivers named before? I counted wrong: there is but one; But O that one is one all o’er.
Rain-swol’n rivers may rise proud, Bent all to drown and overflow; But when indeed all’s overflow’d, They themselves are drowned too.
This thy blood’s deluge (a dire chance, Dear Lord, to thee) to us is found A deluge of deliverance, A deluge lest we should be drown’d.
Ne’er wast thou in a sense so sadly true, The well of living waters, Lord, till now.
This poem was published in the second edition of Steps to the Temple: Sacred Poems, with Other Delights of the Muses (London, 1648) under the title “On the Bleeding Body of Our Crucified Lord”; an earlier version appeared in the book’s first edition in 1646 under the title “On the Bleeding Wounds of Our Crucified Lord.” I use the title by which it is most commonly known, “Upon the Bleeding Crucifix,” first assigned to it in Crashaw’s posthumously published collection Carmen Deo Nostro (Paris, 1652). I’ve modernized the spellings.
Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) was one of the major Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, a movement marked by the use of elaborate figurative language, original conceits, paradoxes, and philosophical exploration. He was also a priest. Ordained in the Church of England in 1638, he was installed as curate of the Church of St Mary the Less in Cambridge, embracing the high-church reforms of Archbishop William Laud, for which he was persecuted. In 1643, during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan posse forced Crashaw into exile in France, where he converted to Roman Catholicism. Waiting for a papal retainer, he struggled with poverty and ill health. Pope Innocent X finally granted Crashaw a post at a seminary in Rome in 1647, and two years later he was given a cathedral benefice in Loreto, where he died of a fever at age thirty-six. He published two collections of poetry during his lifetime.
A litany is a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by a pastor or other leader with alternate responses (text in boldface) by the congregation. Originally published in 1905, the following twenty-one-pronged litany is by the Rt. Rev. George Ridding (1828–1904), who in 1884 became the first bishop of Southwell in Nottinghamshire.
Gbenga Offo (Nigerian, 1957–), Fervent Prayer, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 121 × 173 cm.
O Lord, open our minds to see ourselves as thou seest us, or even as others see us and we see others; and from all unwillingness to know our infirmities, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From moral weakness of spirit, from timidity, from hesitation, from fear of others and dread of responsibility, strengthen us with the courage to speak the truth in love and self-control; and alike from the weakness of hasty violence and the weakness of moral cowardice, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From weakness of judgment, from the indecision that can make no choice and the irresolution that carries no choice into act, and from losing opportunities to serve thee, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From infirmity of purpose, from want of earnest care and interest, from the sluggishness of indolence and the slackness of indifference, and from all spiritual deadness of heart, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From dullness of conscience, from a feeble sense of duty, from thoughtless disregard of consequences to others, from a low idea of the obligations of our Christian calling, and from all half-heartedness in our service for thee, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From weariness in continuing struggles, from despondency in failure and disappointment, from an overburdened sense of unworthiness, from morbid fancies of imaginary backslidings, raise us to a lively hope and trust in thy presence and mercy, in the power of faith and prayer; and from all exaggerated fears and vexations, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From self-conceit and vanity and boasting, from delight in supposed success and superiority, raise us to the modesty and humility of true sense and taste and reality; and from all the harms and hindrances of offensive manners and self-assertion, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From affectation and untruth, conscious or unconscious, from pretense and acting a part, which is hypocrisy, from impulsive self-adaptation to the moment in unreality to please persons or make circumstances easy, strengthen us to simplicity; and from all false appearances, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From love of flattery, from overready belief in praise, from dislike of criticism, from the comfort of self-deception in persuading ourselves that others think better than the truth of us, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From all love of display and sacrifice to popularity, from thought of ourselves and forgetfulness of thee in our worship, hold our minds in spiritual reverence; and in all our words and works from all self-glorification, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From pride and self-will, from the desire to have our own way in all things, from an overweening love of our own ideas and obliviousness to the value of others, enlarge the generosity of our hearts and enlighten the fairness of our judgments; and from all selfish arbitrariness of temper, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From all jealousy, whether of equals or superiors, from grudging others’ success, from impatience of submission and eagerness for authority, give us the spirit of kinship to share loyally with fellow workers in all true proportions; and from all insubordination to law, order, and authority, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From all hasty utterances of impatience, from the retort of irritation and the taunt of sarcasm, from all infirmity of temper in provoking or being provoked, from love of unkind gossip, and from all idle words that may do hurt, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
In all times of temptation to follow pleasure, to leave duty for amusement, to indulge in distraction and dissipation, in dishonesty and debt, to degrade our high calling and forget our Christian vows, and in all times of frailty in our flesh, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
In all times of ignorance and perplexity as to what is right and best to do, direct us, O Lord, with wisdom to judge aright; order our ways and overrule our circumstances as thou canst in thy good providence, and in our mistakes and misunderstandings, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
In times of doubts and questionings, when our belief is perplexed by new learning, new thought, when our faith is strained by creeds, by doctrines, by mysteries beyond our understanding, give us the faithfulness of learners and the courage of believers in thee; alike from stubborn rejection of new revelations and from hasty assurance that we are wiser than our forebears, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
From strife and partisanship and division among thy people, from magnifying our certainties to condemn all differences, from all arrogance in our dealings with others, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
Give us knowledge of ourselves, our powers and weaknesses, our spirit, our sympathy, our imagination, our knowledge, our truth; teach us by the standard of thy Word, by the judgments of others, by examinations of ourselves; give us the earnest desire to strengthen ourselves continually by study, by diligence, by prayer and meditation; and from all fancies, delusions, and prejudices of habit, temper, or society, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
Give us true knowledge of other people in their differences from us and in their likenesses to us, that we may deal with their real selves, measuring their feelings by our own but patiently considering their varied lives and thoughts and circumstances; and in all our relations to them, from false judgments of our own, from misplaced trust and distrust, from misplaced giving and refusing, from misplaced praise and rebuke, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
Chiefly, O Lord, we beseech thee, give us knowledge of thee, to see thee in all thy works, always to feel thy presence near, to hear and know thy call. May thy Spirit be our spirit, thy words our words, and thy will our will, and in all shortcomings and infirmities may we have sure faith in thee. Save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
Finally, O Lord, we humbly beseech thee, blot out our past transgressions, heal the evils of our past negligences and ignorances, make us amend our past mistakes and misunderstandings; uplift our hearts to new love, new energy and devotion, that we may be unburdened from the grief and shame of past faithlessness to go forth in thy strength to persevere through success and failure, through good report and evil report, even to the end; and in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
Source: George Ridding, A Litany of Remembrance, Compiled for Retreats and Quiet Days for His Clergy (London: Bemrose and Sons, 1905) [HT]
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: March 2024 (Art & Theology): My new monthly playlist of thirty songs is up a day early and, as usual, includes both recent releases and older favorites. Let me also point you to the longer, thematically distinct playlists I made for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide.
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CONCERT: Phantasia performs Biber’s Mystery Sonatas, St Hubert’s Church, Corfe Mullen, England,February 17, March 23, and April 13, 2024: The Mysteries of the Rosary are a set of fifteen meditations on episodes in the lives of Jesus and his mother, Mary. They are divided into three groups: the Joyful Mysteries (the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, the Twelve-Year-Old Jesus), the Sorrowful Mysteries (Christ on the Mount of Olives, the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crown of Thorns, Jesus Carries the Cross, and the Crucifixion), and the Glorious Mysteries (the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Beatification of the Virgin).
Around 1676, the Bohemian Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644–1704) wrote fifteen short sonatas for violin and continuo based on these mysteries. In a free three-part event sponsored by Deus Ex Musica, the newly formed period-instrument ensemble Phantasia will be performing Biber’s Mystery Sonatas at St Hubert’s Church, Corfe Mullen, on the south coast of England, accompanied by commentary by musician and educator Dr. Delvyn Case, who will provide thoughts about the ways each sonata reflects its “mystery,” linking specific elements of the musical structure to themes or ideas in the biblical scene. The performance of the first cycle of the work has already passed, but the remaining two are still upcoming: the Sorrowful Mysteries on March 23 (the Saturday just before the start of Holy Week), and the Glorious Mysteries on April 13.
Case tells me that Deus Ex Musica hopes to eventually provide video excerpts from the performances on their YouTube channel. In the meantime, here’s a little teaser, a snippet from the “Presentation in the Temple” movement, performed by Phantasia musicians Emma-Marie Kabanova on Baroque violin and Chris Hirst on German theorbo (long-necked lute).
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ARTICLES:
>> “Mercy at the Movies: Ten Films That Flip the Script” by Meaghan Ritchey, Mockingbird: “Spanning almost a century of cinema, this list of films maps a world—real and imagined—devoid of the mercy for which we all have need, as well as a world animated by unexpected and unearned mercies, flipping the script and leaving the plot forever changed.” What a great list! Number 7 is one of my all-time favorite films.
>> “As If Through a Child’s Inner Eye: The Contemporary Icons of Maxim Sheshukov” by Fr. Silouan Justiniano, Orthodox Arts Journal: In this article from 2016, Fr. Silouan Justiniano, a monk at the Monastery of Saint Dionysios the Areopagite on Long Island, explores the work of contemporary iconographer Maxim Sheshukov (Максим Шешуков) of Pskov, Russia, finding it “exemplary of the diversity and flexibility possible within our ever-renewing and living Tradition.”
Maxim Sheshukov, Zacchaeus, 2015. Egg tempera on gessoed wood.Maxim Sheshukov, Judas, 2020. Egg tempera on gessoed wood.
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NEW ALBUMS:
>> Volume 9 (Lent-Easter-Pentecost) of The Soil and The Seed Project: This is the latest release in an ongoing series of music for the church year by musicians of faith from the Shenandoah Valley. Some of my favorite tracks are “I Will Sing to the LORD” (a setting of Psalm 104:33) and “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” (a newly retuned but old-timey-sounding hymn for Palm Sunday). I also really like “Gentle Shepherd,” a lullaby written for the children of Salford Mennonite Church to sing in worship in 2018 and performed in this music video by the sister folk duo Spectator Bird:
>> Life and Death and Life: Songs for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter by Steve Thorngate: Chicago-based church musician and songwriter Steve Thorngate has followed up his excellent album After the Longest Night: Songs for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with an album for the next two seasons of the church year, including the Day of Pentecost! In addition to twelve original songs, it includes two African American spirituals, a Charles Tindley hymn, and, perhaps my favorite, a cover of (new-to-me) Brett Larson’s poetic country song “Rolling Away,” about barriers to sight and wholeness being removed and a fresh new clarity, a freedom, a path opening up:
>> JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY by Paul Zach: The ever prolific Paul Zach of Virginia’s latest release is an effusively joyous ten-track album celebrating God’s love, salvation, and sustenance. He collaborated with other musicians on the project, including Jon Guerra, Tristen Stuart-Davenport, and IAMSON. Here’s a snippet of the opening song, “Nothing,” based on Romans 8 (listen to the full track here):
Digital concept for outdoor fountain by Chad Knight, 2017 [purchase]
FIRST VOICE.
I thirst, but earth cannot allay The fever coursing through my veins. The healing stream is far away— It flows through Salem’s lovely plains.
The murmurs of its crystal flow Break ever o’er this world of strife; My heart is weary, let me go, To bathe it in the stream of life;
For many worn and weary hearts Have bathed in this pure healing stream, And felt their griefs and cares depart, E’en like some sad forgotten dream.
SECOND VOICE.
“The Word is nigh thee, even in thy heart.”
Say not, within thy weary heart, Who shall ascend above, To bring unto thy fever’d lips The fount of joy and love.
Nor do thou seek to vainly delve Where death’s pale angels tread, To hear the murmur of its flow Around the silent dead.
Within, in thee’s one living fount, Fed from the springs above; There quench thy thirst till thou shalt bathe In God’s own sea of love.
This poem was originally published in Sketches of Southern Life (1872) (revised and expanded from an earlier version in Forest Leaves [1845]) and is in the public domain.
Tired and disheartened, the speaker in the first half of “I Thirst” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper longs to be with God in the New Jerusalem (Salem for short). She thirsts for another world, away from the brokenness and suffering endured on earth. She can faintly hear the rush of living waters somewhere above and beyond her, and she wants desperately to plunge in. Essentially, she wishes to die, to enter the eternal presence of the Lord, where true life is.
But then a wise voice gently reprimands her escapist attitude, reminding her that God is with her in the Spirit right now, pouring his life into her, even residing within her. She has intimate access to the Divine. While full beatitude still lies on the horizon, in the meantime, we can quench our thirst for that “something more” by communing with God interiorly, through prayer and the word, and in corporate worship with our fellow pilgrims on the way. We receive a foretaste of the heavenly feast at the Lord’s Table, and throughout the week God nourishes us again and again so that, overflowing with the Holy Spirit, we may nourish others, pointing them to the Source.
This second half of the poem is based on Romans 10:6–8: “The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: ‘Say not in thine heart, “Who shall ascend into heaven?” (That is, to bring Christ down from above.) Or, “Who shall descend into the deep?” (That is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)’ But what saith it? ‘The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith . . .’” (KJV). There’s an echo of Jesus’s words to his disciples that “neither shall they say, ‘Lo here!’ or, ‘lo there!’ for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). There’s also an implicit connection to John 4:13–14 and 7:38, which says that springs of living water—that is, Spirit-powered life—flow forth from the hearts of believers unto eternity.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911) was a best-selling poet, fiction writer, essayist, traveling lecturer, and prominent political activist who advocated for abolitionism, temperance, and women’s suffrage. Born to free African American parents in Baltimore, Maryland (a slave state), she was orphaned at age three and subsequently raised by her maternal uncle, William Watkins, an AME minister and educator. In her twenties she moved to Philadelphia, and a letter she wrote to a friend in April 1858 describes how, against orders, she refused to give up her seat on a city trolley to a white person. At the forefront of nineteenth-century Black political thought and action, Harper founded, supported, and held high office in several national progressive organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women. She was also at the forefront of the early African American literary tradition, publishing ten volumes of poetry during her lifetime, which sold in the tens of thousands—in addition to her short stories and novels.
BOOK: Meditations of the Heartby Howard Thurman (1953): I’ve just finished reading this book, and I think it would make an excellent companion for Lent. Written by Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, a minister, theologian, professor, and civil rights leader, it consists of 152 one- to two-page meditations that he originally wrote for use by the congregation of Fellowship Church in San Francisco, a racially integrated, interdenominational church he cofounded in 1944. Some of the entries are prayers, some anecdotes, some reflections on scripture or spiritual topics, some expressions of desire or intent. For me, the book really started picking up in the second half. In part 5, several of the meditations begin and/or end with a mantra-like saying, such as “I will keep my heart open to truth and light” or “Teach me to affirm life this day!”—something short and memorizable to keep in the pocket of your heart and turn over and over.
Here’s an example of one of the meditations:
I want to be more loving. Often there are good and sufficient reasons for exercising what seems a clean direct resentment. Again and again, I find it hard to hold in check the sharp retort, the biting comeback when it seems that someone has done violence to my self-respect and decent regard. How natural it seems to “give as good as I get,” to “take nothing lying down,” to announce to all and sundry in a thousand ways that “no one can run over me and get away with it!” All this is a part of the thicket in which my heart gets caught again and again. Deep within me, I want to be more loving—to glow with a warmth that will take the chill off the room which I share with those whose lives touch mine in the traffic of my goings and comings. I want to be more loving!
I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to have the idea in mind, the plan to be more loving. To see it with my mind and give assent to the thought of being loving—this is crystal clear. But I want to be more loving in my heart! I must feel like loving; I must ease the tension in my heart that ejects the sharp barb, the stinging word. I want to be more loving in my heart that, with unconscious awareness and deliberate intent, I shall be a kind, a gracious human being. Thus, those who walk the way with me may find it easier to love, to be gracious because of the Love of God which is increasingly expressed in my living.
Included in the volume are prayers for a gracious spirit in dealing with injustice, for placing our “little lives” and “big problems” on God’s altar, for laying ourselves bare to God’s scrutiny, for “when life grows dingy,” for the kindling of God’s light within us, “to be more holy in my words,” to learn humility from the earth, and for an enlarged heart that makes room for Peace.
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DOCUMENTARY: Unspoken, dir. Christopher Lamark (2022): This feature-length film takes an in-depth look at early African Christianity and its enduring heritage in African diaspora communities in America, dispelling the notion that Christianity is exclusively a white man’s religion. Director Christopher Lamark and his team interview historians, religious scholars, and cultural influencers, including Dr. Vince Bantu, Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley, Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates, Lecrae Moore, and Sho Baraka, who reveal that Africans accepted Christianity of their own agency long before colonization or the slave trade, not just in the North but in sub-Saharan Africa as well. Bantu even points out that the Reformation was well underway in Africa a hundred years before Martin Luther, as the Ethiopian Christian monk Estifanos led a movement to bring the church’s practices more in line with scripture and to challenge abuses.
The false narrative that the Black church was born from those who drank the Kool-Aid served to them by their white oppressors has done a lot of damage, imposing shame and deterring young Black people from the Christian faith. That’s why it’s so important to correct this misinformation, to let people know that colonialism and slavery didn’t bring Christianity; it mutated it. At a time when much of white America was corrupting the gospel, Blacks preserved it, their ancient religious heritage, for subsequent generations.
SYMPOSIUM: Embodied Faith and the Art of Edward Knippers, September 20–21, 2024, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC: Sponsored by the Leighton Ford Initiative in Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness, this year’s Gordon-Conwell theology and arts symposium will center on the paintings of Edward Knippers, from Arlington, Virginia. In addition to an exhibition of over two dozen of Knippers’ works, there will be talks by artists Steve Prince, Bruce Herman, and Rondall Reynoso and theologians Natalie Carnes, W. David O. Taylor, and Kelly Kapic, as well as a dance performance by Sarah Council and a drum circle led by Olaniyi Zainubu and David Drum.
Edward Knippers (American, 1946–), The Resurrection of Our Lord, 2007. Oil on panel, 8 × 12 ft.
“‘Disembodiment is not an option for the Christian.’ This statement by visual artist Edward Knippers is a guiding principle in his work, which features the human body, often in connection with biblical scenes. Disembodiment is not an option for those who believe that human beings are created in God’s image with beautiful bodies, that everything from sin to salvation are embodied experiences, and that God’s redemption comes through the broken and risen body of Jesus. The paintings of Edward Knippers invite us to consider the goodness, brokenness, mystery, and glory of Christ’s body as well our own, urging us to grapple with the temptation to avoid, sexualize, downplay, or disparage bodies along with a fully embodied faith.”
I signed up! The early-bird discount is $20 off and ends March 1.
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SONGS:
>> “Give Me a Clean Heart” by Margaret Douroux, sung by Everett Harris and friends: Written in 1970 by Dr. Margaret Pleasant Douroux, this song of penitence based on Psalm 51:10 is a gospel classic. In the 2020 video below, it’s sung a cappella by a six-person virtual choir, using an arrangement by Adoration ’N Prayze. To hear it sung in a Black church context, led by Rev. Dr. E. Dewey Smith Jr., click here.
>> “Psalm 50” (Psalm 51) in Aramaic by Seraphim Bit-Kharibi: Father Seraphim Bit-Kharibi is an Assyrian Orthodox monk who is the archimandrite (head) of the Monastery of the Thirteen Holy Assyrian Fathers in Dzwell Kanda, Georgia. He is Assyrian by ethnicity, and his native language is Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Here he chants Psalm 51 (Psalm 50 in the Greek numbering system) in Aramaic with his church choir, which appears on his 2018 album Chanting in the Language of Christ. In the following video, the singing starts fifty-one seconds in.
My people, Assyrians, . . . still pay with their lives for their worship of Christ. In Eastern countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, and other warzones, Assyrians get attacked in their churches and beheaded if they refuse to convert to Islam. They are being destroyed en masse.
As for Assyrians in Georgia, there are about 4,000 of them. The Assyrian language is basically Neo-Aramaic, which is about 2,500 years old. The wonderful thing is that this language allows us insight into what people living centuries ago sounded like. Out of 4,000 Assyrians living in Georgia, 2,000 of them live in my village of Kanda and comprise 95 percent of its population. Almost 90 percent of these people speak Neo-Aramaic.
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ART COMMENTARIES: Lent Stations: Vices and Virtues: To promote art-driven contemplation around Lenten themes, this Lent the Visual Commentary on Scripture is spotlighting fourteen artworks from its archives based on the seven deadly sins and seven virtues. So far they’ve featured a pair of medieval statues personifying the Synagogue and the Church, a diamond-encrusted skull by Damien Hirst, a Rubens painting of Cain murdering Abel, and an Egyptian textile roundel depicting scenes from the life of Joseph.
Damien Hirst (British, 1965–), For the Love of God, 2007. Platinum, diamonds, and human teeth, 17.1 × 12.7 × 19 cm.
All photos in this post, except for the last one (of the processional icon), are my own.
(Note: WordPress seems to have disabled the feature that allows you to expand an image upon clicking, but if you’re reading on a computer, you can right-click an image and open it in a new tab to view it in full resolution; if you’re reading on a phone, you can pinch to zoom.)
Located in the Horn of Africa and with access to the Red Sea, Nile River, Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean, Ethiopia stands at the nexus of historical travel, trade, and pilgrimage routes that brought it into contact with surrounding cultures and influenced its artistic development. Coptic Egypt, Nubia, South Arabia, Byzantium, Armenia, Italy, India, and the greater African continent were among those influencers. But Ethiopia not only absorbed influences; it transmitted them too.
A major art exhibition is centering Ethiopia’s artistic traditions in a global context. For Ethiopia at the Crossroads at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (running through March 3), curator Christine Sciacca has brought together more than 220 objects from the Walters’ own extraordinary Ethiopian art collection and private and institutional lenders both domestic and international. Icons, wall paintings, processional crosses and hand crosses, illuminated Gospel books and psalters, sensuls (chain manuscripts), healing scrolls, and more are on display throughout the galleries, whose walls have been painted bright green, yellow, and red—the colors of the Ethiopian flag. To round off the exhibition, guest curator Tsedaye Makonnen, an Ethiopian American multidisciplinary artist, was tasked with curating a few works from contemporary artists of the Ethiopian diaspora.
The majority of objects are Christian, made for liturgical or private devotional use. Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest Christian nations: in the early fourth century, persuaded by a missionary from Syria, King Ezana of Aksum embraced Christianity, and it has been the dominant religion of Ethiopia ever since. But the exhibition does also include some Islamic and Jewish objects.
One of the first works you’ll encounter is a mural that would have originally been mounted on the outer wall of an Ethiopian Orthodox church sanctuary (mäqdäs), portraying the Nativity, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the Adoration of the Magi.
Nativity, Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and Adoration of the Magi, Ethiopia, 18th century. Glue tempera on overlapping canvas pieces mounted to a new stretched canvas, 49 3/16 × 66 15/16 in. (124.9 × 170 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. [object record]
Remarkably, at the Nativity, there is a feast taking place, and Jesus is feeding his mother with what looks like a Communion wafer! As the theologian Lester Ruth has said, “The sound from most baby beds is a cry to be fed. But the cry from the manger is an offer to feed on his body born into this world.”
One of history’s most famous Ethiopian painters is Fre Seyon, who worked at the court of Emperor Zara Yaqob (r. 1434–1468) and was of the first generation of Ethiopian artists who painted icons on wood panels. He was also a monk. He likely introduced one of the characteristic features of Ethiopian icons of the Virgin and Child: the archangels Michael and Gabriel flanking them with drawn swords, acting as a kind of honor guard.
Fre Seyon (Ethiopian, active 1445–1480), Triptych Icon with the Virgin Mary and Christ Child Flanked by Archangels and Saints (center), Twelve Apostles and Saints (left), and Prophets and Saints (right), mid- to late 15th century. Tempera on gesso-primed wood. Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, acc. no. IESMus4186.
My two favorite details of this triptych by Fre Seyon are (on the right wing) the image of the Ancient of Days surrounded by the tetramorph, his wild gray locks being blown about, and in the center, the bird that Christ holds, its feet grasping at a three-branched twig. On a literal level, the bird is a plaything for the boy that charmingly emphasizes his humanity (in the late Middle Ages, at least in Europe—I’m not sure about in Ethiopia—it was common for young children to keep tame birds as pets). On another level, the bird may be symbolic. In traditional Western art, Jesus sometimes holds a goldfinch, a bird with distinctive red markings that’s fond of eating thistle seeds and gathering thistle down and thus came to be read as a prefiguration of Christ’s thorny, blood-spilt passion. I’m not sure whether Fre Seyon intended a symbolic significance for this bird.
Here’s another triptych from the exhibition, this one from a century and a half later:
Triptych Icon with the Virgin Mary and Christ Child Flanked by Archangels, Scenes from the Life of Christ, Saint George, and Saints Honorius, Täklä Haymanot, and Ewostatewos, Ethiopia (Tigray), early 17th century. Glue tempera on panel, 16 3/4 × 22 5/16 in. (42.5 × 56.7 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. [object record]
The composition of the Virgin and Child is based on prints of a painted icon from Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome brought to Ethiopia by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries—but it innovates. As the wall text notes, “Mary’s cloak stretch[es] out in either direction to embrace the scene of Christ Teaching the Apostles below. Umbrella-like, Mary appears as both the protector and personification of the church.”
On the right wing, angels hold up chalices to collect the blood that flows from Jesus’s wounds on the cross, while below that, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus carry Jesus’s wrapped corpse to the tomb. On the left wing is one of my favorite traditional religious scenes: the Harrowing of Hell, or Christ’s Descent into Limbo, in which, on Holy Saturday, Jesus enters the realm of his dead to take back those whom Death has held captive, first of which are our foreparents Adam and Eve. Below that scene is an image of the dragon-slaying Saint George, a late third-century figure from the Levant or Cappadocia who is the patron saint of Ethiopia.
At the bottom center is a scene of Christ teaching the twelve apostles, plus two Ethiopian saints. They all hold hand crosses, like those carried by Ethiopian priests and monks.
Hand Cross with Figure, Ethiopia, probably 18th–19th century. Wood, 13 3/8 × 4 3/16 × 9/16 in. (34 x 10.7 × 1.4 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. [object record]Coptic-Arabic Book of Prayer, Egypt, 18th century. Tempera and ink on parchment, 11 3/4 × 9 in. (29.8 × 22.8 cm). Melikian Collection. [object record]
One of the hallmarks of the exhibition is its multisensory nature: attendees are immersed not only in the sights of Ethiopia but also in the sounds and smells. Scratch-and-sniff cards invite people to take a whiff of frankincense, which would have filled the censer on display. Or to smell berbere, a hot spice blend that would have been stored in the woven baskets nearby.
This olfactory element was produced by the Institute for Digital Archaeology, which, as part of its efforts to record and preserve ephemeral culture, has launched an ambitious program to preserve the heritage of smells. “The aim is to provide the technical means for documenting the aromas of today for the benefit of future generations – and to find new methods and opportunities for experiencing the odors of the past.”
Also in the exhibition there are screens where you can watch videos of Ethiopian Orthodox worship, including music and liturgies, where you will see some of the objects in use. You can also listen to interviews with members of the local Ethiopian diaspora community. (The Washington metropolitan area has the largest Ethiopian population outside Ethiopia.)
Further contextualizing the objects and enhancing the sense of place, pasted onto the wall is a blow-up photograph of a Christian holy-day celebration wending through the streets. This serves as a backdrop to two physical artifacts present in the room: a qämis (dress) and a debab (umbrella).
The inscriptions on many of the Ethiopian icons and manuscript illuminations, which identify the figures and scenes, are in Ge‘ez (aka classical Ethiopic), an ancient South Semitic language that originated over two thousand years ago in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. It’s no longer spoken in daily life, but it is still used as the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and taught to boys in Sunday school. I really wish I could read it, as it would be a great help in interpreting the Ethiopian images I come across in my studies!
Contrary to what some may assume, Ethiopians in the medieval era were not an isolated people. They traveled—to Rome, to Jerusalem, and so forth. Evidence of Holy Land pilgrimage is suggested by an early fourteenth-century Gospel book that includes the domed Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the backdrop for Christ’s resurrection:
Gospel Book with the Crucifixion and Christ’s Resurrection, Ethiopia (Tigray), early 14th century. Ink and paint on parchment, 10 1/2 × 6 11/16 in. (26.7 × 17 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, W.8.36, fols. 6v–7r. [object record]
This is an extraordinary book, one of the oldest surviving Ethiopian manuscripts and the oldest in North America. Ethiopian artists weren’t yet depicting Jesus on the cross, so to represent the Crucifixion, this artist has painted a living lamb surmounting a bejeweled cross, with the two thieves crucified on either side.
Also from the fourteenth century, a manuscript opened to a page spread of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem:
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, folios added from an earlier Gospel book to a Ta’ammera Maryam manuscript, Ethiopia, 14th century. Tempera and ink on parchment. Private collection.
I like how the scene extends across both pages, creating a sense of forward progression, and the two onlookers above the city gate.
One of my favorite objects from the exhibition is a sensul from Gondar depicting ten scenes from the life of Mary. A sensul is an Ethiopian chain manuscript, in this case pocket-size, created out of a single folded strip of parchment attached to heavy hide boards at each end, which creates a small book when folded shut. Here’s a detail showing the Annunciation:
Annunciation, from a Gondarine sensul (chained manuscript), Ethiopia (Gondar), late 17th century. Ink and paint on parchment, each panel 3 5/8 × 3 1/8 in. (9.2 × 9 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. [object record] [GIF]
It’s a common misconception that Ethiopians have always depicted biblical figures as dark-skinned to reflect the local population. Such treatment didn’t become normative until the eighteenth century, although some earlier artists did choose black complexions for holy persons:
Virgin and Child, from a Psalter with the Wəddase Maryam (Praise of Mary) and Mähalǝyä Näbiyyat (Canticles of the Prophets), Ethiopia, 15th century. Ink and pigments on parchment with wooden boards, open: 8 7/8 × 6 11/16 × 3 15/16 in. (22.5 × 17 × 10 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. [object record]The Opening of the Gospel of John, from a Gospel book, Ethiopia, ca. 1504–5. Tempera on parchment, 13 9/16 × 10 7/16 in. (34.5 × 26.5 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 102, fols. 215v–216r. [object record]Triptych Icon with the Virgin Mary and Christ Child Flanked by Archangels (center), the Kwer‘atä re’esu (Man of Sorrows) and Saint George (left), and Saint Gäbrä Mänfäs Qeddus and Abba Arsanyos (right), Ethiopia (Gondar), late 17th–early 18th century. Tempera on gesso-primed wood. Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, acc. no. IESMus3492.
In the triptych shown above, not only is the infant Jesus depicted as Black, but he also wears a necklace made of cowrie shells, which are traditionally given to Ethiopian children for protection!
My favorite artwork from the exhibition is probably this triptych:
Triptych Icon with the Crucifixion (center), Entombment and Guards at the Tomb (left), and Temptation in the Wilderness and the Resurrection of Christ (right), Ethiopia, late 16th century. Tempera on gesso-primed wood. Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, acc. no. IESMus4126.
Its central panel depicts the Crucifixion, Christ’s head bowed in death and his fingers gesturing blessing, even as his palms are nailed. At the top, the sun and the moon mourn his passing. As we saw before, angels catch the blood that drips from his body (notice the cute little hand sticking out from behind his torso!). At the base, the two larger-scale figures are the Virgin Mary and St. John, while next to Mary on a smaller scale is Longinus, the centurion who pierces Christ’s side with a spear.
The left wing shows the Entombment of Christ, with two guards, wearing pointed turbans, sleeping at their post. The right wing shows a scene that the label identifies as “Temptation in the Wilderness” (presumably a translation of the inscription on the tree) but that looks to me more like an Agony in the Garden. Below that is the Resurrection, with Christ holding a victory banner, standing atop Hades. An angel blows a shofar and the dead rise up out of their graves, following Christ, the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20–22). Christ wears a short-sleeved, knee-length jacket with frog closures, and bunched sleeves and trousers, both of which reflect clothing from regions east of Africa.
The wall text notes the fine, wavy lines used to render the figures’ draperies, perhaps influenced by Armenian artists from the Lake Van region.
Yovsian of Vaspurakan (Armenian), Leaf from a Gospel book with the Resurrection of Christ and Visit of the Women to the Tomb of Christ, ca. 1350. Tempera on cotton paper. Private collection.
Here’s another Crucifixion, this one painted in what’s called the Second Gondarine style, characterized by smoothly modeled figures, often with darker skin tones, and wide horizontal bands of red, yellow, and green filling the background:
Diptych Icon with the Crucifixion (left) and the Mocking of Christ (right), Ethiopia, late 17th–early 18th century. Wood, polychrome, 13 1/2 × 9 7/8 in. (34.3 × 25.1 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. [object record]
The squiggles behind Christ at the top left may simply be a decorative motif, but to me they look like falling stars, an apocalyptic sign, and as if the sky is weeping.
The right panel of the diptych shows Christ being cruelly fitted with a crown of thorns.
Two other passion images I want to share are a Last Supper wall painting and an Entombment from a disbound album.
Last Supper, Ethiopia, 18th century. Tempera on linen, mounted on panel, 16 3/4 × 24 in. (42.6 × 61 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. [object record]Album Leaf with the Entombment of Christ, Ethiopia (Sawa?), late 17th century. Pigments on vellum. Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2009.39.3y. [object record]
In the Last Supper, Jesus and Judas both dip their bread (injera!) into the same bowl and exchange a knowing glance.
In the Entombment, Jesus, wrapped in white linen, is lowered into the ground, mourned by several of his women followers. The portrayal of his mother Mary’s weeping, her hands covering her eyes and her face stained with tears, is particularly poignant. This leaf is from a set of forty-four, now matted separately but originally arranged in series and likely painted on several long sheets of parchment that were sewn together and folded accordion-style to form a sensul.
One of the most extraordinary objects on display is a rare folding processional icon that adopts the form of a fan, from the late fifteenth century:
Folding Processional Icon in the Shape of a Fan, Ethiopia, late 15th century (Stephanite). Ink and paint on parchment, thread, extended: 24 1/4 × 154 1/8 × 4 3/4 in. (61.6 × 391.4 × 12 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo courtesy of the museum. [object record]
Thirty-eight identically sized figures span the surface of this elongated parchment: the early Christian martyrs Julitta (Juliet) and Cyricus, St. George, St. John the Baptist, the archangel Michael, the Virgin Mary, the archangel Raphael, St. Paul, the Ethiopian artist-priest Afnin, and unidentified Old Testament patriarchs and prophets. There would have been a wooden handle attached to either end that, when pulled together, created a double handle for a giant wheel to be displayed during liturgical processions and church services (see here). As the museum website notes, “The Virgin Mary, whose hands are raised in a gesture of prayer, is then at the top of the wheel. By depicting Mary in the company of saints and angels, the icon powerfully evokes the celestial community of the church.”
This is just a sampling of all the wonderful art objects that are a part of the Ethiopia at the Crossroadsexhibition. I’ll share more photos on Instagram (@art_and_theology) in the coming weeks.
I strongly encourage you to go see this! I think it would be enjoyable for children as well, especially Christian children, who will be able to identify many of the painted stories. For Christians, it’s an opportunity to connect with our artistic heritage and with African church history. If you can’t catch the exhibition at the Walters in Baltimore before it closes March 3, it will be traveling to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (April 13–July 7, 2024), and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (August 17–November 10, 2024).
If I speak in tongues of justice or spirituality, but do not have ashes, I am a self-congratulating vigil, a Sunday service inspired by itself.
If I have social media outreach, a labyrinth in the church garden, Bible study in the brewpub, and if I have a capital campaign to remove pews, put in church chairs, and even add a coffee shop, but do not have ashes, I am nothing.
If I give to church-wide offerings, and go on mission trips so that I may boast, but do not have ashes, I gain nothing.
Ashes are awkward; ashes are dirty; ashes, like love, are not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. Ashes do not insist on a perfect Lent; they do not even need to be in church or be a gimmick getting folks to church; they do not inventory wrongdoing, especially the wrongdoing of others, but rejoice in the precious now, the very fragility of life.
Ashes bear love, believe in love, hope in the possibility of forgiveness for everyone, endure even times of lovelessness. Forgiveness never ends.
As for spiritual practices, they will come to an end; as for precious old hymns and passionate praise songs, they will grow quiet; as for theology and faith formation, believe me, it will shift and change again.
For churches are always reaching for a part of things, while those who flee church reach for another part, but when the full forgiveness comes, it will look more like Valentine’s Day.
When I was a child, I said, “I love you,” I cut out pink and red hearts, I sent them to everyone, even the bullies, but when I became an adult, I decided to make it more complicated.
Now in our churches and lives we have become too fond of mirrors, but someday we will see each other face to smudged face. Now I love only in part; then I will love fully, even as I have been fully loved.
Today ashes, dust, and a child’s pink paper art abide, these three; but the greatest of these is the heart.
Art & Theology 