Crucifixion – Art & Theology

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 4: Museum für Franken

October 30, 2026November 5, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

This is the final post in my series on religious art highlights from Würzburg, Germany, which I visited on August 28. (See parts 1, 2, and 3.) It took me about fifty-two hours to organize, select, research, write, edit, and format all the content. If you enjoyed the series, would you please consider making a small donation toward this work so that I can avoid setting up paywalls? Thank you! Oh, and since some of you have asked: I offer all my high-resolution photos free of charge for noncommercial use; I just don’t allow reblogging (that is, reproducing these posts in full on a different website).

View from the Alte Mainbrücke (Old Main Bridge), with Festung Marienberg (Marienberg Fortress) in the distance

It was afternoon, and Eric and I had a few more hours left in Würzburg. Thankfully, the rain let up, so after a quick lunch of bratwurst, we trekked over the Old Main Bridge up to Marienberg Fortress. It was about a twenty-minute walk up the stepped Tellsteige to the entrance—quite strenuous for this out-of-shape traveler, and in retrospect, I should have taken the bus, which runs to the top via a different route, but at least I was rewarded with some lovely panoramic views of the city along the way.

Würzburg cityscape — View from the inclined walkway to the Museum für Franken. The red-spired Marienkapelle is on the left, Würzburg Cathedral (with its twin, bannered west towers) is on the right, and just right of center is the gray dome of Neumünster.

Serving as residence of the local prince-bishops from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, Marienberg Fortress now houses a collection of Franconian art from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era in its Museum für Franken (labeled “Lower Franconian Museum” in Google Maps and formerly called the Mainfränkisches Museum). Admission is five euros.

The sculptures of the German late Gothic artist Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531), who lived in Würzburg, are the main attraction of the museum, which owns eighty of them—the largest number of any institution. Riemenschneider was an absolute master of his craft, working in both wood and stone. Made to adorn buildings, his stone sculptures were conceived for particular architectural contexts, whereas most of his wood carvings were made for winged altarpieces. His smaller sculptures, by contrast, were intended for private ownership and worship.

In addition to being an artist, Riemenschneider was involved in local politics, serving on the Würzburg town council. During the German Peasants’ War in 1525, he refused to obey an order by Prince-Bishop Konrad von Thüngen to fight the revolting peasants, as he sympathized with their cause. As a result, most of his property was confiscated and he was incarcerated and tortured in Marienberg Fortress for two months. He received very little work for the remaining six years of his life.

The first work of his that I encountered at the Museum für Franken was an Anna Selbdritt, Middle High German for “Anne herself making a third”—an iconographic type that arose in Germany in the early thirteenth century and gained massive popularity throughout the Rhine-Meuse region in the next few centuries. Emphasizing the human lineage of Jesus, it shows three generations seated together: the matronly St. Anne (the name tradition ascribes to Mary’s mother), with her head and neck typically covered; a diminutive Mary, her hair uncovered to signify her virginal status, and often holding a book, signifying her learning and devoutness; and, toddling on his grandmother’s knee, the infant Christ.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Anna Selbdritt — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Anna Selbdritt*, ca. 1500. Limewood, traces of polychromy.

Here’s another:

A related subject, the Holy Kinship, showing even more of Jesus’s relatives gathered round, is also featured in the museum’s collection, such as in this fragment sculpted by an anonymous artist influenced by Riemenschneider, which shows Mary and Joseph on the left, and Anne and Joachim (Mary’s parents) on the right. The Christ child whom the young Mary used to hold on her lap is missing, as is the book that Anne once held:

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Holy Kinship — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Parts of a Holy Kinship*, ca. 1505. Limewood, painted.

Jesus’s grandparents are never mentioned in scripture, so I admit, I had never even thought about them until I started seeing them depicted in Holy Kinship groups, and Anne in other contexts. It makes me wonder about how Mary’s mother raised her, and how that shaped the woman she became and how she then mothered Jesus. What lessons of faith did Mary learn from Anne? How did Anne react to the news of Mary being pregnant with the Messiah? What about Joachim? In what ways did Grandma and Grandpa dote on little Jesus? Did they have a nickname for him?

Of course Jesus was part of a larger family unit—extended family was very important in the ancient Near East—but without artists to turn my imagination toward that detail, I had neglected to consider it!

Beside the Anna Selbdritt sculpture is another by Riemenschneider, showing St. Stephen, who can be identified by the stack of stones on his knee. (In art, martyrs are often portrayed holding the instruments of their death.)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Saint Stephen — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Saint Stephen*, ca. 1520. Limewood, originally painted.

Here’s a handful of other works by Riemenschneider or his circle, from the permanent collection of the Museum für Franken or on long-term loan to them.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Adam — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Adam*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, left side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Eve — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Eve*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, right side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_John the Baptist — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *John the Baptist*, 1500–1506. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, buttress to the right of the south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Madonna and Child — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Madonna and Child on a Crescent Moon*, ca. 1515. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Crucifix — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Crucifix*, ca. 1500. Limewood, originally painted.

*Head of Christ*, plaster cast by Andreas Halbig, ca. 1850–60, after an original by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1497 (destroyed 1945)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Women — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Women* (fragment from a Lamentation group), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Mary — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Mary*, from a Crucifixion group, ca. 1505. Limewood, originally painted. (The second layer of paint visible today follows the original color scheme.) Former location: Private house in Acholshausen near Ochsenfurt, original location unknown.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Pieta — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Vesperbild* (Pietà), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

And the remaining works below are by miscellaneous other artists from Franconia.

One high-relief wood carving shows the Adoration of the Magi. Look at Balthasar’s feathery headdress!

Another wood sculpture portrays the story from Luke 7:36–50, about the unnamed “sinful woman” anointing the feet of Jesus at the house of Simon the Pharisee, who was hosting a meal. Jesus commends the woman’s act of gratitude, costly love, and hospitality, much to Simon’s consternation. Throughout much of church history, this woman was identified as Mary Magdalene—a view almost all present-day biblical scholars reject. But I use the title the museum provides.

*Christ and Mary Magdalene at the House of Simon the Pharisee*, Franconia, ca. 1510

One of the most moving sculptures I saw shows Mary cradling her dead son in her lap, a devotional image type known in German as the Vesperbild (literally “evening picture”). This image type originated in Germany in the early 1300s, spreading throughout Europe, including, around 1400, Italy, where it took on the name Pietà, Italian for “pity” or “compassion.”

Another image type that originated in Germany is the Gnadenstuhl, variously translated as “Mercy Seat” or “Throne of Grace.” It depicts God the Father holding his crucified Son, with the Holy Spirit as dove in the middle—all three persons of the Trinity.

I plan to write a fully developed article on the Gnadenstuhl sometime in the future, as I’m fascinated by its theological implications, which, as I interpret it (and this is clearer in some versions than in others), run counter to a theology of Jesus’s God-forsakenness on the cross. What if, instead of conceptualizing the Crucifixion as an event in which the Father turned his face away from Christ, we saw the Father as with Christ, supporting and sustaining him, and suffering too? What if we saw the Crucifixion not as a temporary break in God’s triunity, the Father severing fellowship with the Son, the punisher versus the punished, but rather Christ on the cross as the object of the Father’s loving gaze, as he always had been? I have much more thinking and reading and consultation to do on this, as I want to be careful with my words. So for now I’ll share just this one example, and defer further theological discussion until another time.

This stone relief was originally located in the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist (Citizens’ Hospital of the Holy Spirit) in Würzburg, founded in the early fourteenth century by Johann von Steren to provide shelter for the poor and treatment for the sick. Johann also endowed the hospital with vineyards that are maintained to this day, as is a public foundation, which operates senior citizens’ homes and a geriatric rehabilitation clinic. The founder is shown at the bottom left opposite his wife, Megardlis von Steren, their family coat of arms between them. On the middle level, flanking the cross, are Mary and the camel-hair-clad John the Baptist, interceding.

Here’s a (German-language) video the museum made about this Gnadenstuhl:

If you’ve been following my blog since Lent, you’ll recognize this next guy. It’s a Palmesel, literally “Palm Donkey,” mounted by a Christ figure, representing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem the week of his death. It’s not known which German town it comes from, but it would have been affixed to a wagon and wheeled through that town’s streets on Palm Sundays.

(See “The Palmesel (‘Palm Donkey’): A Holy Week Tradition from Medieval Germany.”)

The Museum für Franken majors in sculpture, minors in painting. One pair of paintings I really like is from an early sixteenth-century altarpiece depicting the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. On the left, I love how an angel supports the head of Christ so that it’s not lying on the hard ground; he kneels, gently lifts that pudgy little noggin, and cushions it on his lap.

Nativity and Adoration of the Magi — *Nativity* and *Adoration of the Magi*, Franconia, ca. 1510. Wooden panel paintings, originally part of a winged altarpiece.

And lastly, another pair of altarpiece wings—depicting St. Margaret and St. Apollonia. The rest of the altarpiece was destroyed in 1945.

Margaret was an early fourth-century Christian martyr from Antioch of Pisidia. Her hagiography is pretty wild. The most famous legend associated with her is that, when she was in prison for refusing to renounce Christianity, she prayed that God would show her the enemy who was fighting her. Satan then appeared in the form of a dragon and swallowed her whole. But when she made the sign of the cross inside him, his belly burst open, and she escaped unscathed. She is traditionally shown holding a cross staff and standing atop or ripping through a dragon, imaging the triumph of good over evil.

St. Apollonia — Brother Martinus Schwarz, *Saint Apollonia* (altar wing), ca. 1485. Mixed media on softwood. Probably from a chapel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Apollonia was a second-century Christian martyr from Alexandria whose torture included having all her teeth pulled out or shattered. That’s why she’s traditionally shown holding a set of pliers with a tooth in their grip, or, more rarely, a claw hammer. Here she holds both!

These two paintings are by Brother Martinus Schwarz, the guardian (superior) of the Franciscan monastery in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. On several occasions, he was enlisted by Riemenschneider to paint his sculptures.

I hope you enjoyed this little four-part travelogue. I received an earlier request to share more from my art-related travels (on average, I take an international trip every other year, and it always includes art!), including itineraries, and/or recommendations for religious art destinations. Any itinerary would need to take into account how long you have, who you’re traveling with, what your (and your traveling companions’) other interests are, and your budget. I have more stamina than most when it comes to structuring a day out in the city; others prefer a more leisurely pace, or have to adapt to the needs of young kids. In nine days, I toured Frankfurt, Würzburg, Rothenburg, Nuremburg, Munich, and (just over the border in Austria) Salzburg. The trip would have looked different if I were traveling with friends or parents or children.

If you’re interested in traveling to southern Germany and focusing on religious art, hit me up by email, and I’d be happy to share a list of the museums and churches I visited, and what I thought was worth it versus not.

If you’ve been to that region, or live there, feel free to share some of your favorite places or artworks in the Comment field below.

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 3: St. Kilian’s Cathedral

October 27, 2026October 27, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

All photos in this post are my own.

In the Bavarian city of Würzburg, after visiting the Marienkapelle (part 1) and Neumünster (part 2), my husband Eric and I stepped over to the adjacent St. Kilian’s Cathedral, also referred to simply as Würzburg Cathedral (or Würzburger Dom in German).

Its namesake, Kilian, was a seventh-century Irish missionary bishop to the Germanic tribes of Franconia who was beheaded by Duchess Geilana after he denounced her marriage to Duke Gozbert, her late husband’s brother.

Because the cathedral tours are given only in German, I couldn’t take advantage, but the front desk helpfully offers a free brochure, available in multiple languages, that provides a brief construction history timeline, a map, and a partial list of artworks. I had no idea—though, given the heavy damage Würzburg sustained in World War II, I should have guessed—there would be so many modern and contemporary artworks inside!

The present cathedral, with its Romanesque cruciform layout, was built starting in 1042 and was consecrated in 1187. It underwent subsequent remodels (late Gothic, then Baroque) and then a major reconstruction following the collapse of its nave in a 1945 air raid, reopening in 1967.

The following is by no means a comprehensive accounting of the art inside, but rather a selection of works that stood out to me. You may notice my general disinterest in relics, tombs, and Baroque ornamentation.

I regret I didn’t get a photo of the bronze door designed by sculptor Fritz Koenig in 1964–67 for the main, west portal, featuring creation motifs! When church doors are propped open, they’re easy to miss.

The narthex of Würzburg Cathedral displays two neo-expressionist paintings of the Pietà by Peter Vogt, an artist associated with the southern German Neue Wilde movement of the late 1970s and ’80s.

Peter Vogt_Pieta — Peter Vogt (German, 1944–2013), *Pietà*, 1986, to your right when you enter Würzburg Cathedral

To your left when you enter, there’s a medieval sculpture group depicting the Dormition (the “falling sleep,” or death, of Mary) underneath an untitled contemporary painting by Marco Tirelli, a key member of the San Lorenzo School of painting and sculpture that formed in Rome in the 1980s. Tirelli is known for a “minimalist, atmospheric style . . . characterised by the use of geometric shapes, monochrome surfaces and subtle plays of light and shadow . . . often evok[ing] a sense of mystery and contemplation, inviting the viewer to reflect on the nature of perception and space.” His painting in Würzburg Cathedral shows some kind of linear object balancing on a pedestal. Created specifically for this location, it could suggest a body in repose.

Dormition (detail) — John the Evangelist mourning the death of Mary

Behind this wall is a semienclosed space designated for private prayer. According to an on-site sign, in the days following the destruction of Würzburg in 1945, the dead were gathered at this spot, where relatives would come to say their final goodbyes before burial. Appropriately, then, the focal point is a late Gothic wood sculpture of the Pietà, where Mary mourns the death of her son. These figures are seated atop a raised metal throne connected to a multitiered votive candle stand that shines with the prayers of the faithful.

Pieta with golden wall plate — *Pietà*, ca. 1410; golden wall plate by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

The sculpture is foregrounded by a gilded wall panel designed by Dr. Jürgen Lenssen, who, in addition to serving as cathedral canon, was the art director for the Diocese of Würzburg from 1992 until his retirement in 2017. The wall plates in this space were part of the interior redesign carried out in 2011–12. I really like Lenssen’s interventions, which we will see more of in the crypt—highlighting historic works of art by adding dramatic backing, visual framing, and/or platforms.

Opposite the Pietà is a Russian icon of the Virgin Eleusa (Virgin of Tenderness), showing Mary affectionately holding the Christ child, who nestles into her cheek. It, too, is enhanced by a gold-leafed wall plate, one that frames it and extends the length of the row of chairs below, creating a sort of frieze.

Virgin of Tenderness icon — *Virgin of Tenderness*, Russian icon, 19th century; golden wall plate by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

In art objects and sacred spaces, Pietà images are often juxtaposed with images of the Virgin and Child, as the very natural mother-infant pose gains additional poignancy when placed in conversation with the horrifically unnatural pose of a mother cradling her dead child.

Also in this prayer room is a cross made of three medieval roof-truss nails salvaged from the rubble of Coventry Cathedral in England, destroyed by German bombs on November 14, 1940. It is set into a remnant of a gravestone from Würzburg Cathedral.

The original Cross of Nails was made by Rev. Arthur Philip Wales of Coventry the morning after the Coventry Blitz, the nails bound together with wire. In the postwar years, following Wales’s concept, other recovered nails and roof spikes were welded together, plated with silver, and sent as a gift to cities in Germany that also suffered badly from World War II bombings—at the hands of the British—a gesture of reconciliation.

There are now nearly three hundred churches and organizations worldwide that own a Cross of Nails, either made with authentic hand-forged nails from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral or a replica, together forming a network dedicated to global peace and forgiveness. The Cross of Nails in Würzburg Cathedral is a replica, presented to the cathedral in 2015. (Two others, from 2001, are permanently housed in the city’s town hall and Marienkapelle, and a third travels to a new host location in the city each year.)

In the north (that is, left) aisle is a Crucifixion painting by Mimmo Paladino, a leading figure of the Transavanguardia (Transavantgarde) movement that swept through Italy in the late 1970s and ’80s, reviving figurative art.

Mimmo Paladino_Crucifixion — Mimmo Paladino (Italian, 1948–), *Crucifixion*, 2012

Executed in pale grays and yellows, this work portrays the crucified Christ without a cross, although he’s tied down near the elbows. He’s shadowy but appears bruised and scarred, his eyes half closed as he expires. In the background are pinned pages of thorny vines, disembodied parts (hands, feet, a face, a heart), and indistinguishable forms. This Crucifixion is similar to another one of Paladino’s, a triptych from 2010.

The painting projects out from the wall and appears to be the front face of a storage closet or a confessional—I couldn’t tell.

At the entrance to the nave, in the central aisle, is a monumental bronze menorah designed by the German metalsmith Andreas Moritz. It was commissioned to honor the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. “It reminds us that God planted the Torah like a tree of life for humankind,” Fr. Burkhard Hose said in a Lenten sermon at the cathedral in 2007. It was not lit when I was there—I wonder when or even if it ever is.

Andreas Moritz_Menorah — Andreas Moritz (German, 1901–1983), *Menorah*, 1981

On the north side of the nave, the nations come to Christ in a medieval Adoration of the Magi sculpture group that’s distributed across three pillars. Cathedral guide Rüdiger Seyler told me in an email, in response to my inquiry, that they were carved around 1300 in Germany and demonstrate French influence.

Across from Mary, Christ, and the eldest magus, in the center of the nave, is a bronze baptismal font made by Master Eckard of Worms in 1279. One of the cathedral’s most celebrated medieval treasures, it features eight scenes from the life of Christ, rendered in intricate relief.

Baptismal font by Master Eckard of Worms, 1279

Pentecost — The Descent of the Holy Spirit

In the south (that is, right) aisle are two detached frescoes from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. One shows Mary and John the Evangelist as intercessors. On a smaller scale beside them are two donors (the one on the right is rubbed out) holding scrolls with Latin inscriptions appealing to Christ. “O fili dei miserere mei” (O Son of God, have mercy on me), the woman prays. “Miserere mei deus,” the man similarly beseeches.

Christ with saints — *St. Catherine of Alexandria, the Virgin Mary, Christ as Man of Sorrows, and ?*, ca. 1380

There’s also a modern wood door depicting, in low relief, the Lamb of God in a cityscape in the top right corner (the cathedral guide says it’s the heavenly Jerusalem, but I wonder if it could be Nineveh), and in the lower left, the prophet Jonah being disgorged from the mouth of the whale.

Karl Schneider (German, 1911–1970), *Jonah*, 1967

Near the transept, to the left, is a wood sculpture of the Virgin and Child from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider. Mary is crowned and stepping on a crescent moon, associating her with the Woman of the Apocalypse in Revelation 12.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Virgin and Child — Workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Virgin and Child*, ca. 1515, on a stele by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

To the left of the high altar is a modern tabernacle, a fixed, locked receptacle in which consecrated hosts left over from the Eucharist are reserved. For me, the stone casing evokes the pillar of fire from the Old Testament, a symbol of God’s presence among his people.

Tabernacle by Albert Schilling, 1964–67 — Albert Schilling (Swiss, 1904–1987), *Tabernacle*, 1964–67

At the east end of the cathedral, the chancel area, designed by Hubert Elsässer in 1987–88, combines Baroque and modern elements in a representation of the New Jerusalem. It is anchored by a prominent stele by Elsässer that pictures the risen Christ in the middle of a gilded circle, its bottom circumference hugged by the tree of life. He is surrounded by angels and the twenty-four elders, and below him is the apocalyptic Lamb of God standing, “as if it had been slaughtered” (Rev. 5:6), before the twelve gates to the city, each bearing a giant pearl.

On the walls of the chancel are several trios of Frankish faith witnesses from the seventh to twentieth centuries, sculpted by Hubert Elsässer, Willi Grimm, Tilmar Hornung, Ernst Singer, and Lothar Forster. One group on the left depicts Sister Maria Julitta Ritz (1882–1966), a German Catholic nun, teacher, mystic, and spiritual adviser belonging to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer in Würzburg; Blessed Marcel Callo (1921–1945), a French Catholic member of the Young Christian Workers who was deported to Germany in 1943 and died two years later in the Mauthausen concentration camp; and Sister Antonia Werr (1813–1868), founder of the Holy Childhood Sisters in Oberzell and a pioneer of the reintegration of women released from prison.

Witnesses in the New Jerusalem — Three witnesses in the New Jerusalem: Sr. Maria Julitta Ritz, CSR; Bl. Marcel Callo; Sr. Antonia Werr, OSF

Elsässer also carved the stone, lute-shaped Altar of Mary in the north transept, which centers, in the “soundboard,” a medieval sculpture of the Virgin and Child. What an evocative combination! Conceptually, it reminds me of a charming little quatrain by the seventeenth-century German Christian mystic Angelus Silesius:

Ein Herze das zu Grund
Gott still ist, wie er will,
Wird gern von ihm berührt—
Es ist sein Lautenspiel.

In other words, a heart that is still and hushed readily welcomes the touch of God, like a lute that invites music making. Once God touches the heart, it sings.

Hubert Elsässer (German, 1934–2009), *Altar of Mary*, 1967, with *Virgin and Child*, ca. 1420

The Indian mystic Kabir, who didn’t belong to a particular religious tradition, wrote something similar in the fourteenth century:

My friend, this body is His lute. He tightens the strings and plays its songs.

If the strings break and the pegs work loose, this lute, made of dust, returns to dust.

Kabir says: Nobody else can wake from it that heavenly music.

(trans. Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry)

In the equivalent spot in the south transept is the Apostle Altar by Helmut Weber, a thick, vertical stone framework that houses, cave-like, late medieval sculptures by Tilman Riemenschneider depicting Christ holding an orb that represents the world, Andrew holding a fragment of the X-shaped cross he was martyred on, and Peter holding a key (a reference to Matt. 16:19).

Helmut Weber (German, 1924–2012), *Apostle Altar*, 1966–67, with sculptures of Christ as Salvator Mundi, St. Andrew, and St. Peter by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1502–6

Unfortunately, there is an extension off the south transept that I missed: the Sepulture, a Gothic burial hall. (The door was closed, and I didn’t realize it could be opened; or perhaps the space was temporarily closed to visitors.) It contains, most notably, a 1956 stained glass cycle by Georg Meistermann depicting the seasons and holidays of the church year.

But back to the main body of the cathedral. Overhead, running down the length of the church, is a modern ceiling painting by Franz Nagel depicting the apocalyptic throne chariot vision that the prophet Ezekiel saw while living in exile in Babylon. The vision features bizarre cosmic imagery—wind and fire, a wheeled throne of God, four-faced hybrid creatures with wings, flashes of lightning, a shining crystal dome, eyes all over.

Franz Nagel (German, 1907–1976), *Vision of Ezekiel*, 1965–66, ceiling painting. Upper clerestory windows by Ludwig Schaffrath (German, 1924–2011), 1965.

Nagel also created the eighteen stained glass windows along the two side aisles, the cathedral guide told me—in a similarly abstract style.

Heading out to cloister, I passed through a bronze door by Heinrich Söller depicting the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

Heinrich Söller_Wise and Foolish Virgins — Heinrich Söller (German, 1903–1997), *The Wise and Foolish Virgins*, 1967

The cloister contains several contemporary sculptures, including a bronze by Maria Lehnen.

Maria Lehnen_Dissolution — Maria Lehnen (German, 1949–2025), *In Auflösung* (Dissolution), 2005

Many of Lehnen’s works depict a human figure tightly bound in linen, rope, or bandages but in a state of growth and becoming, alluding to the often arduous process of transformation. Dissolution is no different. It shows the old self inside a cocoon, breaking down to make way for the new. The man lifts his eyes to the hills, whence cometh his help, his life. (I’ve seen photos of a similar sculpture by Lehnen from 2004, Großer Sitzender [Large Seated Man], aka Der Gefesselte [The Bound Man], seated on the steps outside the cathedral, but it wasn’t there when I was.)

Another striking work in the cloister is Andreas Kuhnlein’s oakwood Risen Christ.

Andreas Kuhnlein (German, 1953–), *Auferstandener* (Risen Christ), 2013–14

Kuhnlein uses a chainsaw to create rugged, life-size, figurative sculptures from uprooted, decaying trees, bringing the dead trunks to “life” by highlighting the protrusions, cuts, fractures, or grain patterns in the hardwood. At the blessing ceremony for the redesigned cloister in 2014, Bishop Dr. Friedhelm Hofmann said that the rough-hewn Risen Christ, bearing scorch marks from Kuhnlein’s aggressive motorized slicing, reminds him of the burning bush in which God revealed himself to Moses.

In the center of the courtyard (which, from what I could tell, does not admit entry) is a trio of biomorphic forms in Corten steel.

Herbert Mehler_Kavex — Herbert Mehler (German, 1949–), *Kavex*, 2006

The final section of the cathedral that I visited was the crypt below, divided into four rooms. In one side room there’s a small, square bronze relief of the Trinity, elevated in a simple, black wooden structure: the Father represented as a benevolent hand reaching down from the heavens; the Son as the incarnate Word, the infant Christ, seated in the lap of the woman who bore him into the world, and from whom he took his flesh; and the Holy Spirit as a dove.

Albert Schilling_Our Lady of the Trinity — Albert Schilling (Swiss, 1904–1987), *Notre Dame de la Trinité* (Our Lady of the Trinity), 1957. Housing by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012.

Against the wall are three large gestural paintings—inks on canvas—by Jacques Gassmann, on the theme of resurrection. In each, a pillar of light bursts up out of the ground, pushing aside the darkness.

Jacques Gassmann_Resurrection — Jacques Gassmann (German, 1963–), *Resurrection*, 2012

The other side room contains a set of Stations of the Cross paintings by Karl Clobes, plus a double-sided stand cross and a Picasso-esque wooden column carved with the likeness of Christ as the Man of Sorrows.

Friedrich Press_Man of Sorrows — Friedrich Press (German, 1904–1990), *Schmerzensmann* (Man of Sorrows), 1970

In a niche just outside is another Man of Sorrows sculpture by the same artist, this one in steel. Christ’s form is abstract and distorted. He bows his head, pierced by enormous thorns, at an impossible angle.

Friedrich Press_The Crown — Friedrich Press (German, 1904–1990), *Die Krone* (The Crown), 1984

The western crypt contains the oldest artwork in the cathedral: a stone cross with a head of Christ in the center, wearing, the brochure interprets, a faint smile. It was previously supposed to be Merovingian or Carolingian, but more recent studies date it later to around the year 1000, making it Ottonian.

Ottonian cross — Stone cross with softly smiling Christ, Ottonian, ca. 1000

Niches at the left and right entrance of this chapel combine old and new. At the left, a stylized, gold-plated cross by Jürgen Lenssen, contemporary but resembling a pre-Columbian artifact, sits atop a Romanesque stele preserved from the prebombed cathedral. And at the right, a sixteenth-century Italian Madonna and Child are perched on the top tier of a distinctively modern stele, also by Lenssen.

Madonna and Child — *Virgin and Child*, Italy, 16th century, with stele by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

At one point while Eric and I were wandering about the cathedral, people were taking seats in the pews, and a man came out and gave some remarks in German. He was dressed nicely but not in liturgical vestments, so I figured it wasn’t a Mass. Since it was pouring rain outside, I was in no rush to reach my final Würzburg destination, so I decided to take a seat as well. When the speaker sat down, sonorous musical tones started issuing forth from the loft behind me. It turns out we were being treated to a lovely fifteen-minute organ concert. Here’s a snippet:

The Museum am Dom (Cathedral Museum) next door was closed for renovations when I was in Würzburg; it will reopen in summer 2028. The Domschatz (Cathedral Treasury), located inside the cathedral, was also closed to individuals, which was a shame.

Even so, Würzburg Cathedral offers many sights worth seeing—and at no cost! Having seen a photo only of the high altar prior to visiting, I was pleasantly surprised by the great variety of works inside.

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 2: Neumünster

October 15, 2026October 26, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

(Read part 1 here.)

Neumünster (labeled “New Munster” in Google Maps) is a Catholic parish church in Würzburg, Germany. Dating back to the eleventh century, it was first built as a Romanesque basilica, but it underwent expansions, renovations, and remodels over the next seven centuries to match prevailing tastes of the times, the most major being the construction of its Baroque west facade and its Baroque interior remodel, including the frescoed ceiling and new altar, in the eighteenth century. These features still stand today, restored from the heavy bomb damage the church suffered in World War II.

Neumünster was originally a collegiate church, where the Daily Office was maintained by a college of canons. But in 1803, during German secularization, the church’s associated religious chapter was dissolved, and the church passed into state ownership. From 1809 to 1811 and again in 1814, the military used it as a munitions depot. Worship services resumed in 1821, and at last in 1908, the church received its independent parish status. It is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist.

Located on Kürschnerhof street, a pedestrian thoroughfare, Neumünster is wedged between two retail apartment buildings. It was a gray, rainy day when I was there, so it was quite dark inside. (For a brighter photo of the interior, see here.)

My main reason for visiting Neumünster was to see the Schmerzensmannkreuz (Man of Sorrows Cross) in its left altar niche, a polychrome wood crucifix made circa 1350 and extensively restored in 2007.

Just over seven feet tall, this Gothic sculpture is rare because of the unusual position of Christ’s arms: Instead of being pinned to the horizontal beam of the cross, they’re curved in front of his torso, as if he’s cradling an invisible someone or something—but two enormous nails still puncture his palms.

The iconography may be based on a mystical vision of the French abbot and theologian St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). While praying before a crucifix one day, the Christ figure supposedly came to life and embraced him.

A Würzburg folk legend claims that the Schmerzensmannkreuz didn’t always look like this; that, sometime in its early history, it miraculously changed from its original form to demonstrate the love of God to an aggressor. The story goes that when a thief tried to steal the gold and silver jewelry that pilgrims had draped around the crucifix, the Christ figure unloosed his arms from the cross and wrapped them around the thief in a hug, which caused him to repent. The crucifix then remained fixed in that hugging posture.

The Neumünster congregation wants everyone to feel the embrace of God. Christ’s affectionate clasp is not just for Bernard, or for thieves, but for anyone who desires it. Be held in my love, says this Christ of Neumünster.

I’m reminded of the 2006 song “Circle Me” by Jeff Johnson, a setting of an ancient Celtic lorica (prayer of protection). “Circle me, O God, let your arms enfold me. Circle me, O God, let your love surround . . .”

But to me, this Jesus looks less like he’s placing his arms around an adult’s back and more like he’s holding a baby, perhaps even rocking one to sleep. His mouth is open—maybe he’s singing a lullaby! This imagery evokes Bible verses about the maternal love of God, such as Isaiah 49:15, where God compares his tender, devoted care and affection to that of a breastfeeding mother; Isaiah 66:13, where God assures, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you”; and Psalm 131:2, where the psalmist describes being “calmed and quieted” in the Lord, his soul “like a weaned child with its mother.”

The Christ figure’s protective embrace also evokes passages in which God is described metaphorically as a shepherd who gathers his lambs in his arm (e.g., Isa. 40:11).

Characteristic of the Gothic style, the Schmerzensmannkreuz emphasizes Jesus’s suffering, and in naturalistic terms. He’s gaunt, he’s battered, he’s dripping with blood that’s modeled in relief. And his gaze is filled with compassion.

In the opposite altar niche on the right side of the church, we see Jesus as a baby being held by his mother—a stone sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider, carved in 1493. The figures’ gazes are too detached for my liking, but it’s sweet how Mary touches Jesus’s foot, a not-uncommon detail found in other renditions of the subject.

In 2007–2011, Neumünster underwent another major renovation, fixing some post–World War II restoration flaws and incorporating contemporary German art.

To line the nave, they commissioned the neo-expressionist artist Thomas Lange (b. 1957), a key figure in the Neue Wilde movement in 1980s West Berlin, to make eight oil paintings of scenes from the life of Christ, all taken from the Gospel of John. He chose to depict Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, an evangelistic encounter, five of Christ’s miracles, and a passion scene. They progress roughly chronologically as you move down the nave, starting with the Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of Christ nearest the west end and concluding with the Washing of the Disciples’ Feet and the Raising of Lazarus near the east. I’ll share them here in the order they appear in John’s Gospel.

Thomas Lange_The Baptism of Christ — Thomas Lange, *The Baptism of Christ* (John 1:29–34), 2009

Thomas Lange_The Wedding at Cana — Thomas Lange, *The Wedding at Cana* (John 2:1–12), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob's Well — Thomas Lange, *Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well* (John 4:1–42), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand* (John 6:1–15), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Walks on Water — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Walks on Water* (John 6:16–21), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind* (John 9), 2009

Thomas Lange_The Raising of Lazarus — Thomas Lange, *The Raising of Lazarus* (John 11:1–44), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet* (John 13:1–20), 2009

I’m compelled by Lange’s style, merging abstraction and figuration. However, I found some of the paintings difficult to interpret and, as there were no titles or other information available for them on signs or in brochures, had to email the Diocese of Würzburg to verify their subjects. My husband and I had exchanged guesses, most of which proved to be wrong—Joseph of Arimathea preparing Jesus’s body for burial? No, Jesus washing Peter’s feet. The Resurrection? Close, but no, that’s Lazarus. The risen Christ appearing to his mother? No, the woman at the well. (But why doesn’t he have a shirt on?) The conversion of Saul? Nope, that’s the man born blind, being made to see for the first time. (I like the implicit juxtaposition of sighting and blinding, but the distance between the two figures doesn’t fit the intimacy of the story in John 9, and the shooting light beam is a far cry from the earthy, dirt-and-saliva method Jesus uses to restore the man’s vision.)

The figures, I think, Lange extracts from traditional Baroque paintings, though I can’t pinpoint any exactly—but most come from different narrative contexts than the ones represented. Maybe the artist intended these to be merely faint impressions of Christ’s ministry, of his circle of friends and followers, with different episodes melding into one another?

I think the most successful painting in the set is the most straightforward one: The Baptism of Christ. John the Baptist holds a cross-staff in one hand and with the other pours water from a shell onto Jesus’s head, while a light from the heavens shines down, representing God’s blessing. The men are awash in blues and greens.

Jesus Walks on Water also works well, the wispiness of Jesus’s form lending credence to the disciples’ fear that he’s a ghost—even though Jesus seems to be heading away from the boat, not toward it.

I’m curious to hear what you all think.

Another contemporary artist the church commissioned is Markus Fräger (1959–2020), who was based in Cologne. He painted four oils for the entrance area, depicting, I later found out, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel.

Markus Fräger_Isaiah — Markus Fräger, *Isaiah*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Jeremiah — Markus Fräger, *Jeremiah*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Daniel — Markus Fräger, *Daniel*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Ezekiel — Markus Fräger, *Ezekiel*, 2009

Again, I didn’t quite jibe with them. I see streaks of rain, the glow of city lights, people in shadow. (Referring to the artist’s larger oeuvre, Galerie Friedmann-Hahn wrote that “Markus Fräger staged his pictures like scenes from an American film noir.”) The paintings seem to portray the malaise of modernity, giving off a mood of alienation. The figures are looking out, altercating, contemplating, or making direct eye contact with us. Do you see a connection to the Hebrew prophets? What do the paintings make you feel? Are they fitting for a place of worship, and why or why not? What is the function of church art, anyway?

One of the newer art additions at Neumünster that works brilliantly (both literally and figuratively!) is a painting of the Crucifixion by Jacques Gassmann (b. 1963) that hangs above an early eighteenth-century bronze of Christ recumbent in the vestibule of the east crypt.

Jacques Gassmann_Passion — Jacques Gassmann, *Passion*, 2010; *Effigy of Christ (Christ in His Grave)*, ca. 1700

In Gassmann’s Passion, the crucified Christ is a gold, diaphanous silhouette composed of wafer-thin sweeps of ink. His head droops down in death but is streaked with light. Because there’s no cross, he appears suspended in space. The background is a warm brownish-yellow, reminiscent of tarnished metal.

Gassmann lives in Würzburg and Berlin, dividing his time between the two cities, with a studio in each. I encourage you to peruse his website, https://ogrody.org/, and to follow him on Instagram @jacques_gassmann_. He’s completed over thirty artworks for churches (including a set of three paintings in Würzburg Cathedral that I’ll share in part 3!), a monumental Apocalypse cycle, and various other projects.

Because there was a service going on inside the crypt while I was at Neumünster, I didn’t enter that space. It houses the graves and relics of St. Kilian and his companion martyrs and, among other pieces, a contemporary painting of Christ Triumphant by Michael Triegel (b. 1968).

All photos in this post are my own.

Roundup: Exultet rolls, “Sing, Little Bird,” Biola’s Calvary Chapel, and more

April 15, 2026April 16, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Most of us grew up celebrating Easter Sunday like it was the finish line, the big, joyful mic drop: “He is risen!” But the church, historically, has never treated Easter as a single day. It’s a whole season—Eastertide, stretching fifty days from resurrection to Pentecost. Fifty days of practicing resurrection. Of sitting in the reality that new life doesn’t just burst forth . . . it unfolds.

And yet, many evangelical spaces move on by the next Sunday. Back to regular programming. Back to “what’s next.”

What if we didn’t rush past resurrection? What if we let joy linger? What if we made space for wonder, for doubt, for the slow work of becoming people shaped by an empty tomb?

Eastertide invites us to stay. To notice. To live like resurrection is still happening. Maybe that’s something worth recovering.

—@thetheologygirls

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BLOG POSTS: “Rejoice Now!” by Sarah J. Biggs and “Exultet rolls: Celebrating the return of light” by Eleanor Jackson: These two posts from the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts Blog contain overlapping content; the first (from 2013) is better for images, the second for text. “The medieval churches of Southern Italy maintained a very special Easter tradition,” writes curator Ellie Jackson. “They celebrated the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday from a scroll made to be used once a year for this specific ritual. Known as Exultet rolls, these manuscripts combine words, music and pictures to create an enthralling multimedia experience centred on the joyful theme of light returning to the world.” Their name comes from the first word of the ancient proclamation sung by a deacon or priest during the blessing of the Paschal candle in the Roman Rite: “Exultet iam angelica turba caelum . . .” (Rejoice now, all you heavenly choirs of angels . . .) “Exsultent,” with an s, is a variant spelling.

Deacon reading from an Exultet roll — *A deacon reading the Exultet roll in church*, from the Monte Cassino Exultet Roll, made at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino in southern Italy, ca. 1075–80. London, British Library, Add MS 30337, membrane 11.

The British Library has one Exultet roll in its collection (Add MS 30337); learn more about it from either of these blog posts. Unfortunately, the full digitized manuscript file was among the thousand-plus lost in a massive cyberattack in October 2023, and it has not yet been rescanned, but select images can be viewed in low resolution in the posts. These images include a personification of Mother Earth and her abundance, a comparison of the Crossing of the Red Sea (the quintessential saving act in Israel’s history) to the Harrowing of Hell, bees gathering nectar (which accompanies words of gratitude to the bees that produced the wax of the Paschal candle), and more.

To read the Exultet (Easter Proclamation) from the Roman Catholic liturgy and for additional images from other Exultet rolls, see the Ad Imaginem Dei blog post “Exultet! The Easter Proclamation” by Margaret M. Duffy. To hear the Exultet sung using the Gregorian chant melody from the Roman Missal, see the following rendition from Liturgical Folk’s 2017 album Table Settings, or the 2010 OCP recording from Pange Lingua Gloriosi: Choral Music for Holy Week.

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SONGS:

>> “Surrexit Christus” by Jacques Berthier: Kester Limner and Andy Myers perform a 1984 song from Taizé, an ecumenical monastic community in Burgundy, France. Its Latin refrain, “Surrexit Christus . . . Cantate Domino,” translates to “Christ is risen . . . Sing to the Lord!”

>> “Sing, Little Bird” by Dan Damon: In 2024, the California-based hymnist Dan Damon penned new lyrics to a traditional Ukrainian folk tune that I’m sure you’ll recognize. He writes,

The Ukrainian folk song SHCHEDRYK (lit. “bountiful evening”) is a shchedrivka, or New Year’s song, known in English as “The Little Swallow.” It tells of a swallow bringing good news for the coming year. Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych (1877–1921) arranged the folk song in 1916. Twenty years later, American composer Peter J. Wilhousky published his own lyrics for the song. His choral arrangement, “Carol of the Bells,” has become a standard in the Christmas repertoire. As I was working on a solo piano arrangement of this song, I got an idea for an Easter text that could be sung by a congregation. The swallow in the original folk song made me think of a little bird singing the good news of the resurrection.

“Sing, Little Bird” is the title song of his latest hymn collection that is forthcoming from Hope Publishing Company in July 2026. Another new Easter hymn that will be included is “Last night did Christ the Sun rise from the dark,” a setting of a ninth-century text by Sedulius Scottus that I featured last year; follow the link to listen to Damon’s demo.

>> “Gone” by Eldridge Fox: Teddy Huffam and the Gems, with pianist Anthony Burger, perform a classic Southern gospel song written by Eldrige Fox in 1972.

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VIRTUAL TOUR: Calvary Chapel, Biola University, La Mirada, California: Constructed in 1975, Biola University’s Calvary Chapel [previously] was completely renovated in summer 2018 to enhance the sense of the sacred in that space. Biola commissioned leading Danish artists Peter Brandes and Maja Lisa Engelhardt, a husband-wife team, to conceive and carry out a creative vision that would involve updated lighting, colors, flooring, and seating and the making of new art. The renovated chapel features thirty-two handcrafted stained glass windows by Brandes (integrating innovative LED illumination technology) and two large gilded sculptures by Engelhardt, all created around the central theme of the Resurrection. The focal point is a thirty-one-foot-long gold relief sculpture that depicts the resurrected Christ emerging from the tomb, radiant with glory.

Biola’s website offers a self-guided tour comprising six videos—one for each of the four wings, plus an intro and a conclusion—and photographs and descriptions of the art. I highly encourage you to explore this resource! Here’s the video for the “western wing” (the liturgical east end):

Engelhardt, Maja Lisa_Resurrection — Maja Lisa Engelhardt (Danish, 1956–), *Resurrection*, 2018. Gilded plaster relief wall, 31 × 18 ft. Calvary Chapel, Biola University, La Mirada, California.

Peter Brandes stained glass — Peter Brandes (Danish, 1944–2025), *The Crucifixion of Christ*, *Supper at Emmaus*, and *The Resurrected Christ Encounters Mary Magdalene*, 2018. Stained glass, Calvary Chapel, Biola University, La Mirada, California.

I really like the allusiveness of the altarpiece and the semiabstract style of the biblical scenes in the windows, which include the Sacrifice of Isaac, Elijah Raising the Widow’s Son, David Playing the Harp for King Saul, Cain Killing Abel, the Baptism of Christ, Nicodemus Visiting Christ, Christ in Gethsemane,the Crucifixion, the Eucharist, the Supper at Emmaus, Christ as the Sowing Farmer, and the Return of the Prodigal Son.

Easter, Day 1: He Died . . . But He Rose!

April 5, 2026April 5, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Happy Easter, friends.

LOOK: Crucifixion sur la ville and Résurrection by Arcabas

Arcabas_Crucifixion and Resurrection — Arcabas (French, 1926–2018), *Crucifixion sur la ville* (Crucifixion over the City) and *Résurrection*, from the Petite suite en noir et or (Little Suite in Black and Gold), 1975. Oil on canvas.

There is very little written in English about the sacred French artist Jean-Marie Pirot (1926–2018), known as Arcabas [previously]—which is a shame, because his work is fantastic. I’d love to see it in person someday. Much of it is concentrated at L’église de Saint-Hugues-de-Chartreuse, near where he lived from 1950 until his death. One published source of information about the artist is Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey’s wonderful book In the Beauty of Holiness: Art and the Bible in Western Culture (Eerdmans, 2017); he devotes the book’s final section, pages 349–63, to Arcabas, reproducing in full color seven of his paintings and translating material from French interviews. Jeffrey cites Kirsten Appleyard’s honors thesis at Baylor University from 2009, which he supervised, as the most complete study of the artist’s work available in English, which I believe is still the case.

Unfortunately, the website arcabas.com, from which I gathered photos of many of Arcabas’s works some ten years ago, is now defunct. That’s where today’s featured image was sourced from. The panels are from a larger polyptych, which you can view in this photo of its temporary exhibition at L’église Saint Ignace in Paris. I’m not sure where it resides now.

The left panels portray Jesus being crucified outside the city walls. But the cityscape is not of first-century Jerusalem; it’s a modern French village. As have many artists before him, Arcabas collapses the distance between Jesus’s life and times and his own by transposing Jesus’s death to a familiar setting.

On the right is a lamb whose legs are bound in preparation for sacrifice—an emblem of Christ, who was led “like a lamb . . . to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7). Opposite the lamb is a snarling wolf, a reference to Psalm 22:16–18:

For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they bound my hands and feet.
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

The Crucified One bows his head. His hands, nailed by the wrists to the cross, are contorted in pain. His ribcage protrudes from his emaciated torso. But as he gives up the spirit, it spills out, a silhouette of his form, in gold, dissolving into a sun/halo behind his head. His golden arms are strong, vigorous, alluding to the Resurrection and capturing something of the paradox of the cross, a site of both shame and glory.

In the right panel, which is on a larger scale than the others, granting it preeminence, Christ emerges victorious from a multicolored sarcophagus. He rises bodily, but his form is transfigured, shiny, especially his eyes. Stepping out of the box that cannot contain him, he lifts his hands to reveal the wounds of crucifixion, signs of our redemption. The lustrous swirls about his head could be his wild, windswept hair, or else some kind of electric or mystic force.

This is one of several Resurrection images Arcabas painted during his lifetime. Another one, you can hear the artist discuss (in French) in the following 2005 interview, cued up at 20:26:

This whole KTO TV segment, nearly an hour long, is worth watching if you’re a French speaker! I am not, but a generous follower of my blog, knowing my enthusiasm for Arcabas, translated significant portions of it for me into English.

Since Arcabas’s death, a new online hub has sprung up to showcase his work: https://arcabas.net/. While it doesn’t host as many image files as its .com predecessor, this archive provides helpful location and copyright information, and I believe it’s in a state of expansion.

LISTEN: “The Resurrection” by Richard Smallwood (based on Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise”), 1982

And he died
For our sin and our shame
Jesus died
For our sins
He hung high
On a hill called Calvary
To save a wretch undone
Like you and me

I can’t forget how he died for me
He suffered so much on Calvary
I can’t forget how they pierced his side
And he bowed his head and died

But he rose
Conquered death, hell, and grave
And he rose
With all power
Jesus rose
Now he lives forevermore
Through Christ we now are saved eternally

Richard Smallwood (1948–2025) was a legendary gospel composer, pianist, and singer, known for blending classical music with traditional gospel. For “The Resurrection,” which debuted on the album The Richard Smallwood Singers (1982), he adopted the main theme of Rachmaninoff’s wordless song “Vocalise” as the basis. Meditating on Christ’s crucifixion and then resurrection, Smallwood’s song evolves in tone from elegiac to triumphant.

This is the first post in a daily series for the first eight days of Easter, each one of which will pair a visual artwork with a piece of music to encourage celebration of the risen Christ.

Holy Week: Sweet Son

April 2, 2026April 3, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna

Mantegna, Andrea_Crucifixion (San Zeno Altarpiece) — Andrea Mantegna (Italian, ca. 1431–1506), *The Crucifixion*, 1457–59. Tempera on panel, 75 × 96 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. [object record]

There’s much to look at in this painting. I want to focus on Jesus’s grieving mother under the cross to our left.

In Renaissance art of the Crucifixion, Mother Mary is often shown swooning, supported by John or by one of her female companions. Here she’s with a group of four women—the other Marys—two of whom wrap an arm around her to bolster her up when her legs give out. Her son has just died, and she can’t bear to look.

This work was painted by Andrea Mantegna between 1457 and 1459 as the central element of the predella (base) of the high altarpiece at San Zeno in Verona, Italy, a monumental work of art. In 1797, French Napoleonic forces plundered the altarpiece and brought it to Paris; the country returned the three main panels to Verona in 1815 when Napoleon lost power, but they kept the three predella panels, which are on display in museums: The Crucifixion at the Louvre, and The Agony in the Garden and The Resurrection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours.

LISTEN: “Swete Sone” | Words: Anon., 14th century (before 1372) | Music by Katharine Blake, 1998 | Performed by Mediæval Bæbes on Worldes Blysse, 1998

This song is in Middle English. If you’re reading along with the lyrics, you’ll want to know that the letter thorn, þ, says th; and u makes a w or v sound. I’ve bracketed the two words that the Mediæval Bæbes leave out.

Suete sone, reu on me, & brest out of þi bondis;
For [nou] me þinket þat i se, þoru boþen þin hondes,
Nailes dreuen in-to þe tre, so reufuliche þu honges.
Nu is betre þat i fle & lete alle þese londis.

Suete sone, þi faire face droppet al on blode,
& þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode;
Hou may þi modris herte þolen so suete fode,
Þat blissed was of alle born & best of alle gode!

Suete sone, reu on me & bring me out of þis liue,
For me þinket þat i se þi detȝ, it neyhit suiþe;
Þi feet ben nailed to þe tre—nou may i no more þriue,
For [al] þis werld with-outen þe ne sal me maken bliþe.

Source: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv.MS.18.7.21, fol. 120r (DIMEV 5089); as transcribed by Carleton Brown in Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century (1924)

MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

Sweet son, have pity on me, and break out of your bonds;
For I think I see through both your hands
Nails have been driven into the tree, so painfully you hang there.
It would be better if I fled now and abandoned all these lands.

Sweet son, your beautiful face is dripping with blood,
And your body beneath is bound to the cross;
How will your mother’s heart endure [the suffering of] such a sweet child,
Who was born most blessed of all and was the most goodly of all!

Sweet son, have pity on me and deliver me from this life,
For I think I see your death approaches quickly;
Your feet have been nailed to the tree—now I may never prosper,
For without you, all this world can never make me happy.

These three monorhyming quatrains are from John of Grimestone’s commonplace book, where he jotted down material for sermons; it’s unknown whether they’re original to him or compiled from some other source. (For other lyrics I’ve featured from this notebook, see “Undo Thy Door, My Spouse Dear” and “Love Me Brought.”)

In the poem, written in Mother Mary’s voice, Mary reveals a premonition she’s had of her son being nailed on a tree to die. (At least that’s how I read it, mainly because of the “I think I sees.”) She agonizes over this nightmare and asks Jesus that if it be true, to deliver her from this life, as she won’t be able to endure the sorrow of losing him.

Verses like these really humanize Mary, a woman who, faithful though she was to God’s unfolding plan, nevertheless felt the intense parental pangs that inevitably accompany witnessing one’s child being brutalized and killed.

The poem has been set to medieval-style music by Katharine Blake, the founder of Mediæval Bæbes, a classical chart–topping British music ensemble celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year.

The song opens with an unaccompanied solo voice singing in free time. In the second half of the first stanza, additional voices enter, as well as a strummed instrument. Then with “& þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode,” the tempo quickens; a 2/4 meter takes shape and regularizes, with percussion keeping the beat; and the volume amplifies with twelve women now singing. With the final stanza, there’s once again a softening as the song returns to a single vocalist and the instrumentation drops out. This movement from weary pain, Mary barely able to speak it aloud, to foot-stomping anger, which her friends join in solidarity, and back to solitary desolation captures different shades of grief.

For a wholly a cappella solo rendition, see this performance by Ariana Ellis:

The Lüneburg Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel): An International Gothic Masterpiece

March 27, 2026June 4, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Other than the second one, captioned with a copyright notice, all photos in this article are my own.

When visiting the Landesmuseum (State Museum) in Hanover, Germany, last fall, I was struck by a monumental medieval altarpiece depicting thirty-six scenes from the life of Christ. Scholars refer to it as the Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel) after the now-lost large gold repoussé plaque, originally designed (most likely) as an antependium in the twelfth century, that was once at the center of its inner display, depicting Christ seated in a mandorla flanked by the twelve apostles.

One of the most important northern German works in the International Gothic style, the altarpiece was created in the 1420s for the high altar of the newly built Benedictine monastery of St. Michael in Lüneburg. It was the work of carpenters, sculptors, and two painters, one from the circle of the Westphalian artist Conrad von Soest, and the other probably based in Cologne or even Lüneburg.

The Golden Panel altarpiece, in its original design, had two pairs of hinged wings that could be opened or closed over a fixed central shrine, offering three possible configurations. The shrine, irrecoverably robbed in 1644 and 1698, housed the monastery’s treasury, especially its reliquaries, displayed in a cabinet of twenty-two richly decorated rectangular compartments surrounding the eponymous, aforementioned “golden panel.” This main body of the altarpiece (called the corpus) was dismantled in 1792–94 and its remaining objects melted or sold. The predella (base) has also been lost.

However, the wings, replete with panel paintings and figural sculptures, have survived to the present day and, having been restored in 2016–19, are proudly displayed at the Landesmuseum Hannover for visitors to enjoy. When you enter the gallery, you are greeted with the full cycle of thirty-six painted scenes (nine per panel) from the life of Christ, read from left to right in long rows. Then you can walk behind to see the panels’ other sides, which would not have been simultaneously on view to the monks of St. Michael’s with the altarpiece’s original construction.

The scale model in the following photograph gives you a good sense of the three distinct viewing states that were originally possible.

Golden Panel model — Dr. Bastian Eclercy, curator of Old Master paintings at the Landesmuseum Hannover from 2010 to 2013, presents a historical model of the Golden Panel. Photo © Landesmuseum Hannover.

View 1: The Brazen Serpent and The Crucifixion

View 1, the closed view, juxtaposes a scriptural type and antitype: the brazen serpent in the wilderness, raised on a pole for the life of the people, and the crucifixion of Christ.

Numbers 21:4–9 tells of how, wandering the desert after God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites complained about how life was better before. As punishment for their ingratitude, God sent poisonous serpents into their camp, and fatalities ensued. The people realized their sin and repented, asking Moses to intercede with God for relief. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent and lift it high on a pole, and to instruct the people that if they are bitten, to look on the sculpture and they will be spared.

In John 3:14–15, Jesus interpreted this story as foreshadowing his being raised on a cross to bring healing: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he told Nicodemus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The anonymous artist shows the gleaming snake on a tau cross that mirrors the one Jesus hangs on in the opposite panel. The lower banderole reads, from the Vulgate, “Peccavimus quia locuti sumus contra Dominum et te ora ut tollat a nobis serpentes” (We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents). I can’t make out the text on the upper banderole, other than aspexerit, “shall look,” but presumably it communicates God’s antidote to the snake bites.

Moses has horns, as is typical in Western iconography, because of a literal translation of the Hebrew qaran in Exodus 34:29–30:

And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord. And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near. (Douay–Rheims)

Almost all English translations say instead that Moses’s face “shone” or “became radiant,” interpreting qaran as horned with rays of light. This artist splits the difference and shows, growing out from under Moses’s hat, two bony protrusions that are luminous!

The Crucifixion scene shows a Roman spearman piercing Jesus’s side to confirm his death, while Jesus’s mother, two other Marys, and the apostle John mourn under his right hand. A centurion in the crowd exclaims, “Vere Filius Dei erat iste” (Truly this man was the Son of God).

View 2: The Life of Christ

When these two outer panels were opened in their day, they would reveal view 2 of the altarpiece (pictured at top of article), or the first open view, displaying scenes from Jesus’s infancy, passion, and resurrection across four panels.

Golden Panel 1 — The Annunciation; The Visitation; The Nativity; The Raising of Lazarus; Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; Christ Carrying His Cross; Christ in Distress; The Crucifixion

Golden Panel 2 — The Annunciation to the Shepherds; The Circumcision of Christ; The Adoration of the Magi; Christ Washing His Disciples’ Feet; The Agony in the Garden (2); The Deposition; The Entombment; The Harrowing of Hell

Golden Panel 3 — The Presentation in the Temple; The Massacre of the Innocents; The Flight to Egypt; The Arrest of Christ; Christ before Pilate; Christ before Herod; The Resurrection; The Holy Women at the Tomb; The Ascension

Golden Panel 4 — Christ among the Doctors in the Temple; The Wedding at Cana; The Baptism of Christ; The Flagellation of Christ; Ecce Homo; The Mocking of Christ; The Descent of the Holy Spirit; The Death of the Virgin; The Coronation of the Virgin

I’ll share a few of my favorite scenes.

The Nativity features what I call the industrious Joseph motif [previously], as rather than sitting off to the side with his head in his hands, as he’s commonly shown, Jesus’s dad is hard at work trying to make his family comfortable. He pumps a bellows to supply air to the small fire he has going, either to warm his wife and child or, as he does in a handful of other medieval German Nativities, to cook a simple meal. Mary reclines with the infant Christ on a woven straw mattress while angels peek in from over a curtain to adore him.

The Last Supper I found especially charming because of how the apostle John shelters under Jesus’s cloak, relaxed, secure. The image of John resting on Jesus’s breast rose to popularity in fourteenth-century Germany, a commemoration of the two’s bosom friendship and a call to, like John, abide in Christ. It’s based on the description in John 13:23, which says that at Jesus’s last meal, at Passover time, “one of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining close to his heart.” This verse alludes to the typical eating posture assumed at ancient Greco-Roman banquets, at which men reclined with their heads near a low table and their feet pointing away from it. But in Christian interpretation it has come to signify, more than simply a seating arrangement, the proximity of John to the heart of Christ.

In the Golden Panel’s Last Supper, Jesus enfolds John much like a mother hen would her chick (cf. Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34), his garment like a wing. Even in this moment before his greatest trial, when most would be inclined to turn inward, Jesus shows concern for those he loves—he covers, protects. And nourishes. He stretches his hand across the table, laid with dishes of lamb and fish, to feed Judas a morsel of bread that resembles a eucharistic wafer. He sups with the man he knows will betray him. He does not turn him away.

Further along in the narrative, the scene of Christ carrying his cross with the help of Simon of Cyrene stands out to me because of the man pulling Jesus’s hair as he walks. The cruel mocking and assault continue outside the courthouse and en route to Golgotha.

Called Christus im Elend (Christ in Distress) or Christus in der Rast (Christ at Rest), the subject depicted in the bottom center of the far left panel first started appearing in northern Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century. It shows Jesus sitting pensively, usually on a stone, waiting for his cross to be raised.

In the Golden Panel, Jesus, naked, bleeds all over while the soldiers roll dice and fight over who will get to keep his seamless tunic. The two men in the foreground, one with a flagrum tucked in his belt, tumble and tear at each other, pulling and biting, exemplifying the human penchant for violence that will culminate in the killing of God’s Son. (The basket of hammer and nails that has been procured for the task sits temporarily off to the side.) Combative and puerile, this is the humanity Christ has come to save.

The interior Crucifixion painting is fairly standard, but oh, isn’t it lovely? One notable feature is how Christ’s blood flows from his side, his final wound, down to his groin, where he received, at eight days old, his first wound, the cutting off of his foreskin in a ritual circumcision. Scholars such as Leo Steinberg have remarked how this diversion of the blood’s natural path (which would be to the right thigh) was an intentional device some painters used to connect these two sheddings of blood, and thus the incarnation and the atonement.

Moving two pictures down the line, the Entombment scene caught my eye because of the tender care shown to the dead Christ before he’s laid to rest. Nicodemus anoints Christ’s wounds with myrrh and aloes, applying them with a spatula, while Joseph of Arimathea, who has donated his tomb, prepares to enshroud the body.

In a quintessential Easter scene, three faithful women come to the burial site after the Sabbath to complete the anointing ritual, only to find a finely feathered angel perched atop the skewed lid of Christ’s now-empty sarcophagus. Mary Magdalene, holding a golden jar, points into the vacant space as if to ask, “Where’s my Lord?” To which the angel responds that he is risen!

View 3 (Partial): Sculptures of the Saints

View 3 of the Golden Panel altarpiece—the fully open view, saved for important feast days—cannot be replicated because the shrine that formed the corpus is lost. But flanking the shrine would have been two wings that have survived largely intact, displaying polychrome wood sculptures of twenty (mostly male) saints and, in the intermediate row, smaller statuettes of six female saints (the other six are missing).

The identities of the main figures are listed below. The ones I couldn’t confirm but for which I proffer my best guess are followed by a question mark.

Top left: John the Baptist, Thomas(?), Matthew, Simon(?), George
Top right: Mary Magdalene, Lawrence (deacon), Benedict, Cyriacus (deacon), Michael
Bottom left: Madonna and Child, Peter, Paul, James the Lesser(?), James the Greater
Bottom right: Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Jude (Thaddeus)(?), Andrew, Philip

In the sculpture of the Madonna and Child, Mary holds an inkwell that Jesus dips his pen into as he writes on a scroll. How delightful! It’s a rare iconography but one that’s shared by the Tintenfassmadonna in Hildesheim Cathedral, sculpted around the same time.

The figure to the right of Mary is Peter. He holds a handle with a dowel hole on the underside; originally, a set of keys was attached to it and hung down.

The diminutive figure above Mary is Catherine of Alexandria, identifiable by the fragmented wheel she holds, a symbol of her martyrdom.

To learn more about the Golden Panel, see the book Die Goldene Tafel aus Lüneburg, edited by Antje-Fee Köllermann and Christine Unsinn (Michael Imhof, 2021), from the Niederdeutschen Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte (Low German Contributions to Art History) series. Only three of its twenty-five chapters are in English; the rest is in German. It’s highly technical, the product of an interdisciplinary research project carried out from 2012 to 2016. There’s not much in it about the actual content of the images. But it provides ample color illustrations, which I always appreciate, as well as stylistic comparisons, historical inventories, and more.

Advent, Day 8: Vision

December 7, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

LOOK: Peace Window by Marc Chagall

Chagall, Marc_Peace Window — Marc Chagall (Russian/French, 1887–1985), *Peace Window*, 1964. Stained glass, 12 × 15 ft. Public lobby, General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Manufactured by Brigitte Simon and Charles Marq.

This stained glass window by Marc Chagall was commissioned as a memorial for the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), who served as the second secretary-general of the United Nations, and for the fifteen other UN staff and peacekeepers who died with him when their plane crashed on the way to a peace negotiation for the Congo Crisis in Northern Rhodesia. The artist’s handwritten dedication reads, “A tous ceux qui ont servi les buts et principes de la Charte des Nations Unies et pour lesquels Dag Hammarskjöld a donné sa vie” (To all who served the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, for which Dag Hammarskjöld gave his life).

Chagall’s design was executed by master glassmakers Brigitte Simon and Charles Marq of Atelier Simon-Marq.

Chagall was born in 1887 into a Hasidic Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus). He moved to Paris in 1910 to develop his art, becoming a French citizen in 1937. When Nazis took over the country, threatening Chagall’s safety, he was successfully extricated to the United States with the help of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned to France for good in 1948. His impressive body of work, marked by a spiritual vivacity, includes—in addition to stained glass—paintings, drawings, book illustrations, stage sets, ceramics, and tapestries.

His 1964 Peace Window in New York City—not to be confused with his similar but much larger Peace Window of 1974 in the Chapel of the Cordeliers in Sarrebourg, France—is full of biblical allusions.

My eyes are drawn first to the red and purple bouquet in the center, under which stands an amorous couple. Who are they? What do they represent? I can think of several possibilities:

1. Adam and Eve. In the sketch Chagall made for the window, the woman is very clearly naked, though she’s less obviously so in the final window. That Eve, pre-fall, is traditionally portrayed unclothed, and that Chagall’s later Peace Window unequivocally portrays Adam and Eve within a red tree, lends credence to the interpretation of these figures as our primordial foreparents, in which case the flowering mass would stand for the tree of life in the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9).

2. The Annunciation—the angel Gabriel coming to Mary to announce that she had been chosen to birth and mother God’s Son. The male head is bodiless, emerging from the crimson bloom (suggesting, perhaps, a supernatural entity), and there’s a yellow glow at the woman’s breast, perhaps signifying the conception of Christ. What’s more, the woman appears to be cradling something—her pregnant belly?

3. God and the human soul, or Christ and his church. One traditional Jewish interpretation of the poetic book of scripture known as the Song of Solomon is that it celebrates the love between humanity and the Divine. Medieval Christians, similarly, spoke of the book as an allegory of the future marriage of Christ and the church, his bride, drawing too on the New Testament book of Revelation, which culminates in a mystical union, a picture of cosmic harmony, heaven and earth inseparably joined.

4. The kiss of Justice and Peace. Psalm 85:8–11, a common Advent text, speaks of the divine attributes that coalesce to accomplish salvation (in the Christian reading, in the Incarnation):

Let me hear what God the LORD will speak,
    for he will speak peace to his people,
    to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
    that his glory may dwell in our land.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
    righteousness and peace will kiss each other [emphasis mine].
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
    and righteousness will look down from the sky.

5. The kiss of Joy. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a favorite of Dag Hammarskjöld’s, and its performance, at least the “Ode to Joy” chorus in its final movement, is a United Nations Day concert tradition. Hammarskjöld described the work as “a jubilant assertion of life,” championing universal peace and brotherhood. One of the lines from Friedrich Schiller’s text that Beethoven set exclaims that “Joy . . . kiss[es] . . . the whole world!”

I suspect some or all of these ideas were at play when Chagall designed the window. Or even just romantic love in general (with other types of love portrayed elsewhere in the composition), as he often painted himself and his wife Bella kissing or embracing.

After this tableau, my eyes go to the large male figure cloaked in purple just right of center. I take him to be the prophet Isaiah, beholding a vision of wild animals and children cavorting together in harmony (see Isaiah 11). A boy, for example, reaches his hand out toward a viper and is not harmed.

But it’s also possible that’s meant to be Isaiah at the bottom left of the window, his face illumined by the beauty spread out before him, which an angel gestures to, guiding the prophet’s imagination:

On the top right, another angel delivers the Ten Commandments to the people of God.

Next to this communication of God’s word is the death of God’s Word in the flesh, Jesus Christ, around whom the crowds have gathered. A man ascends a ladder propped against the cross, the ladder being a multivalent symbol harking back to Jacob’s dream at Bethel and evoking notions of descent and ascent.

Vignettes below include a couple embracing with an infant in hand, a woman being fed at a table (the Eucharist?), a family reading a book (probably the Bible), a woman making music, and another bearing flowers.

At the top left is a lamentation scene that evokes those of Christ deposed from the cross. A man in a loincloth lies dead or wounded on the ground, his head cradled by a loved one, while at his feet another mourner throws her arms up in grief. This is the cost of human violence.

By contrast, in the bottom left corner, a mother cradles her child, evoking scenes of the nativity of Christ—of Mary with her newborn son.

All these characters—human, animal, and divine—are sprawled across a warm azure background, playing out love, suffering, death, peace, joy, and reconciliation.

When I visited the United Nations Headquarters last year, Chagall’s Peace Window was unlit and surrounded by construction, but a UN Facebook post from this September suggests that it is on view again. I’d love to see it in person and get some high-resolution photos of it. The majority of the detail shots I’ve posted here are cropped from a photo that Addison Godel (Flickr user Doctor Casino) took in 2016 when six of the forty panels were out for cleaning.

LISTEN: “Oracles” by Steve Bell, on Keening for the Dawn (2012)

O ancient seer, your vision told
Of desert highways streaming home
To the mountain of the Lord
Where nations sound a righteous song forevermore

And on that mountain men will forge
From cruel implements of war
The tools to till and garden soil
The rose will bloom and faces shine with gladdening oil

And it will surely come to pass
Justice will reign on earth at last
The wolf will lie down with the lamb
No beast destroy, no serpent strike the child’s hand

And God himself will choose the sign
A frightened woman in her time
Will bear a son and name him well
God with us! O come, O come, Emmanuel!

Roundup: “Nagamo” by Andrew Balfour, “A Timbered Choir” by Josh Rodriguez, and more

November 4, 2025November 21, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: November 2025 (Art & Theology)

Among this month’s thirty spiritual songs of note are three by Indigenous artists of Turtle Island (North America):

>> “Ambe Anishinaabeg” from Cree composer Andrew Balfour’s Nagamo project, which explores the intersections of Indigenous song and Anglican choral music. The Ojibway text of “Ambe Anishinaabeg” was gifted to Balfour by Cory Campbell: “Ambe Anishinaabeg / Biindigeg Anishinaabeg / Mino-bimaadiziwin omaa” (Come in, two-legged beings / Come in, all people / There is good life here). On the album (and the playlist), the text is set to the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” by the late English Renaissance composer Thomas Weelkes; but in another iteration, captured in the following video, Balfour pairs the text with the music of William Byrd’s “Sing Joyfully” (itself a setting of Psalm 81:1–4). (Balfour has also written original music for Campbell’s text.) See the third roundup item for more about Nagamo.

>> “Jesus I Always Want to Be Near to You,” a solo by Doc Tate Nevaquaya (1932–1996) on Native American flute. Nevaquaya, who was Comanche, played an important role in the revival of the Native American flute in the 1970s, expanding the repertoire and playing techniques. This instrumental is one of twelve from the album Comanche Flute Music, originally released in 1979 by Folkway Records, which also includes Nevaquaya’s adaptations of non-Comanche flute melodies, his own compositions, and one piece by his son Edmund. As he states in his introduction to this track, “Jesus I Always Want to Be Near You” is an original Christian hymn written by the Comanche people. I couldn’t find the lyrics, but to listen to some more Comanche hymns, with words, see this video by Comanche Nation tribal members Anthony Nauni and Chad Tahchawwickah, and this recorded gathering at Lawton Indian Baptist Church in Oklahoma.

>> “naká·yè·ʔr sihskę̀·nęʔ (may it be that you have peace)” by Tuscarora singer Jennifer Kreisburg, a song of blessing from the new Yo-Yo Ma EP Our Common Nature. According to Sony Classical, the song expresses “hope for a future where humanity and nature coexist in harmony.” I just started listening to the album’s wonderful companion podcast, for which four of the seven episodes have been released.

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Also for November: See my Thanksgiving Playlist [introduction], comprising a hundred-plus songs of gratitude, with a few recent additions at the bottom; and my Christ the King Playlist [introduction], which I made for the final feast of the church year, celebrated Sunday, November 23, this year.

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ALBUM: Nagamo by Andrew Balfour: In May and June 2022, the Vancouver-based vocal ensemble musica intima teamed up with composer Andrew Balfour to create Nagamo (Cree for “sings”), a concert and CD recording that reimagines the Anglican choral tradition through an Indigenous lens. A child of the Sixties Scoop, Balfour was born in 1967 in the Fisher River Cree Nation near Winnipeg but at six weeks old was forcibly removed from his birth family by child welfare authorities of Manitoba and adopted by white parents. He says his childhood was happy, and that he was fortunate to have been put in a men and boy’s choir from a young age, where he received a musical education and international travel opportunities; but of course, the sudden rupture from his culture of origin left wounds.

With Nagamo, Balfour seeks to bring together his identities as Cree and as the son of Anglicans of Scottish descent, who raised him in the church (his father was a minister); his love of Renaissance choral music, much of which voices polyphonic praises to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and an Indigenous spiritual sensibility. The album comprises two original compositions (including one in Scots Gaelic), five Renaissance songs retexted (not translated) in Cree or Ojibway, and five unaltered works by William Byrd and Alfonso Ferrabosco. “The concept mines the fantastical question of what might have happened musically should Indigenous and European musics and cultural expressions come together in a manner collaborative and respectful, rather than divisive,” writes music journalist Andrew Scott for The WholeNote.

Examples of the adaptations include “Four Directions,” a recitation in Ojibway of the four cardinal directions—Ningaabiianong (West), Giiwedinong (North), Wabanong (East), Zhaawanong (South)—set to Thomas Tallis’s “Te lucis ante terminum” [previously], a prayer for protection through the night. And “Ispiciwin” (Journey), whose musical basis is Orlando Gibbons’s “Drop, drop, slow tears,” a Christian hymn of contrition, but whose Cree lyrics make reference instead to a smudging ceremony, a sacred cleansing ritual practiced by many Indigenous peoples. Here’s a mini-documentary about the Nagamo project:

Balfour “re-imagines how settler and Indigenous spiritualities can interact with one another. In essence, Balfour imagines a new system of power relations where both spiritualities can co-exist and engage in dialogue without the power imbalances of colonization,” Lukas Sawatsky writes in his master’s thesis Converging Paths: Settler Colonialism and the Canadian Choral Tradition, the final chapter of which explores Nagamo as a case study of “the reclaiming of settler-originated aesthetic models and genres by Indigenous people for their own storytelling purposes.” Sawatsky continues, “Through the lens of the Anglican choral tradition, Balfour synthesises his Indigenous cultural identity into music that proudly celebrates both parts, without resolving their differences. Through this, Balfour looks towards a world where the settlers and Indigenous people can exist without settler colonialism.”

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EVENT RECORDING: “A Timbered Choir: The Witness of Creation,” Wheaton College, Illinois, October 28, 2025: Last week the Marion E. Wade Center and the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College presented “A Timbered Choir: The Witness of Creation,” an evening of music and poetry inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s and Wendell Berry’s love of creation and visions of stewardship. Readings and reflections by Wheaton professors from across the disciplines of biology, literature, and art culminated in the world premiere of a new Wade Center commission, a fifteen-minute choral cycle by Josh Rodriguez called A Timbered Choir, which sets to music three poems by Berry. “It was my aim to create a work which captures a sense of awe: at the trees which play such an important role in our fragile ecosystem, at the beauty and life-giving pleasure they provide for us, and at our urgent responsibility to care for them,” Rodriguez explains. “In this three-part tale on the life of trees, the audience is invited to witness an opening lullaby about the birth of the forest, followed by a desperate lament on the destruction of nature’s life-giving biodiversity, and a concluding celebration of nature’s resilience.”

The Wade Center is dedicated to promoting the study of seven British Christian writers: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Wendell Berry—an American poet, novelist, and farmer especially known for his “Sabbath poems,” an expansive series he wrote over decades during his Sunday walks in the woods—is not part of their archive. But Wade Center Director Jim Beitler says they built this recent event around Berry because they want to encourage learners not just to look at the seven authors but to look with them, at the things they cared about. The center identified particular resonance between Berry and Tolkien.

Here are the time stamps from the video recording. The songs are performed by the Wheaton College Concert Choir under the direction of John William Trotter:

Opening remarks by Jim Beitler, director of the Wade Center
7:30: “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Stephanie Martin (words by Robert Frost)
11:02: Reflection by Kristen Page, biologist and author of The Wonders of Creation: Learning Stewardship from Narnia and Middle-Earth
18:34: Reflection by Tiffany Kriner, English professor and author of In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm
26:44: Reflection by Joel Sheesley, artist
34:54: Introducing composer Josh Rodriguez
36:08: Statement by Josh Rodriguez
45:45: A Timbered Choir by Josh Rodriguez
- 1. How long does it take to make the woods? (1985-V)
- 2. It is the destruction of the world (1988-II)
- 3. Slowly, slowly they return (1986-I)

Also, the Armerding Center for Music and the Arts, where the event was held, is hosting tree-related art in the lobby: Cross of the Feast by Sung Hwan Kim (a crucifix in wood and mixed media made for a past KOSTA [Korean Students All Nations] Conference at Wheaton), permanently installed; and a set of graphite drawings by David Hooker, on display through Christmas break.

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ARTICLE: “Regarding the Face of God: On the Paintings, Drawings, and Notebooks of Paul Thek” by Wallace Ludel, Triangle House Review: Last month I wrote about a chalk drawing by Paul Thek that the Archdiocese of Cologne curated for its latest exhibition at Kolumba museum. In preparation for writing, I did some basic research about the artist, who’s best known for his “Meat Pieces,” and was led to this fascinating article that focuses instead on his paintings, drawings, and notebooks, especially the religiosity and contradictions they are charged with.

Writer Wallace Ludel describes Thek’s “Diver” paintings of 1969–70, speculated to have been inspired by an ancient fresco inside the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy, as “at once ebullient and lonesome, womb-like and deathly.”

Thek, Paul_Diver — Paul Thek (American, 1933–1988), *Untitled* (diver), 1969. Synthetic polymer on newspaper, 26 1/8 × 36 1⁄4 in. (66.4 × 92.1 cm). Kolodny Family Collection. Photo: Orcutt & Van Der Putten. © Estate of George Paul Thek.

Thek identified as a “predominately gay” Catholic man and was even accepted as a novice by a Carthusian monastery in Vermont shortly before he died of AIDS in 1988. From 1970 onward, he kept notebooks where he copied long passages from spiritual texts and wrote his own devotional musings, as well as made drawings and watercolors and recorded various diaristic thoughts and mantras. One set of the pages, for example, titled “96 Sacraments,” enumerates ninety-six activities—“to breathe . . . to pee . . . to do the dishes . . . to forget bad things . . .”—each followed by the refrain “Praise the Lord.” This list evinces the spiritual influence of Brother Lawrence, who talked about “practicing the presence of God” in all things, which Thek remarked on in a 1984 letter to the Carthusians.

Thek, Paul_96 Sacraments — “96 Sacraments,” page from Paul Thek’s notebook #75, ca. 1975. Watermill Center Collection, Water Mill, New York. © Estate of George Paul Thek.

Thek is an artist I had never heard of prior to seeing his work exhibited at Kolumba. Visiting art museums, taking note of the works that intrigue you, and following up afterward with online searches to see and learn more is a great way to develop knowledge of the art that’s out there and to start to identify some of your own personal favorites—which is one of the primary questions I get asked. (“Where do you find all this art?”)

Bone chapel, anti-Nazi martyrs’ memorial, and contemporary stained glass at the Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

October 21, 2025October 23, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

(All photos in this article are my own, taken either by me or my husband.)

I knew very little about the virgin martyr St. Ursula before visiting the basilica dedicated to her in Cologne, Germany, last month. She’s the patron saint of the city, where, according to hagiography, she was murdered sometime in the fourth century.

There’s no historical veracity to her story, which is why her name was removed from the Catholic calendar of saints when it was revised in 1969. But her feast day is still observed by many on October 21.

St. Ursula alabaster — Johann T.W. Lentz, *St. Ursula* (detail), 1659. Alabaster. North transept, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne. This reclining figure of the saint lies over her Baroque tomb made of black marble.

As legend has it, Ursula was a Romano-British princess and a Christian. She was engaged to be married to a pagan prince. To delay the wedding, she successfully requested that she first be allowed to take a three-year pilgrimage to Rome, and that she be accompanied by eleven thousand virgins (a ridiculous number that was likely embellished from what was originally eleven). On their voyage, she converted all eleven thousand to the faith.

On their way back to Britain from Rome, they were traveling through Cologne when it was besieged by the Huns, a group of nomadic warriors from Central Asia. Ursula and her companions refused the soldiers’ sexual advances and were slaughtered as a result. One version of the legend says the women’s souls then formed a celestial army that drove out the Huns, saving Cologne.

The earliest possible reference to Ursula and company—though they are unnamed and unnumbered—is a stone plaque dated to 400. Now incorporated into the choir wall of the present Basilica of St. Ursula, it mentions a basilica restored on this site by the Roman senator Clematius to commemorate the “martyred virgins coming from the east, in fulfillment of a vow, . . . holy virgins [who] spilled their blood in the name of Christ.” This inscription not only provides the seed of what would become the Ursula legend; it’s also the earliest evidence of Christianity in Cologne, attesting to the presence of a church there in the fourth century.

It wasn’t until the tenth century that the name Ursula emerged, identified as the leader of the group of virgins, and that their number, which had previously ranged from two to thousands, became fixed at eleven thousand. The women were never officially canonized, but their veneration as saints grew immensely in the twelfth century after a large, late antique Roman cemetery was discovered in 1106 near the aforementioned Church of the Holy Virgins in Cologne during an excavation project to expand the city’s fortifications. The skeletal remains in the hundreds of graves were purported to be those of the martyred women (notwithstanding the presence of many men’s and children’s bones among them).

The discovery of these putative relics called for the rebuilding of the predecessor church to house them. Construction began in the second quarter of the twelfth century, and it’s that structure, with later renovations, refurbishments, additions, and (post–World War II) restorations and repairs, that stands today. The church was elevated to the status of minor basilica in 1920.

The nave and the main tower of the Basilica of St. Ursula are Romanesque, but the choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style.

Shrine altar in the choir apse, containing the relics of Ursula, Etherius, and Hippolytus. Behind it are grilled reliquary niches and paintings of the Legend of St. Ursula from from the “long cycle” of 1456.

Chancel windows by Francis William Dixon, 1892. Left: St. James the Greater, St. Andrew, and St. Peter, accompanied by angels; lower register: Isaiah, Isaac, and Abraham. Center: Christ enthroned, with Mary and St. John the Baptist (Deesis) at his side; lower register: St. Ursula of Cologne with her companions. Right: St. James the Lesser, St. Matthew, and St. Thomas, accompanied by angels; lower register: Daniel, Malachi, and Joel.

The reason the Basilica of St. Ursula was on my list of stops was I wanted to see its so-called Golden Chamber.

The Golden Chamber

The largest ossuary north of the Alps, the Goldene Kammer (Golden Chamber) is decorated with the bones of, allegedly, St. Ursula and her eleven thousand travel mates, which are artfully arranged across the walls in geometric patterns, rosettes, and even words! Unlike most other relic displays I had seen before, where the relics are kept in some kind of encasement and usually only partially visible, this one puts many of the bones right out in the open, making the whole room a walk-in reliquary.

A Baroque marvel, the Golden Chamber was established on the south side of the church in 1643 through a donation by the imperial court councilor of the Holy Roman Empire Johann von Crane and his wife, Verena Hegemihler. It replaced a smaller medieval camera aurea (treasury and relic chamber), where the bones had previously been displayed. Crane and Hegemihler oversaw the design and construction of the space, with its ribbed, star-studded, sky-blue vault, and the arrangement of the bones into their present form.

Above the altar, tibias, fibulas, femurs, humeri, and other bones spell out “Sancta Ursula Ora Pro Nobis” (Saint Ursula, pray for us). Also rendered in bones are the name Etherius—Ursula’s fiancé, who converted to Christianity at her insistence and met her in Cologne to die with her—and a mention of the holy virgins.

Other sections of the wall use vertebrae, pelvic bones, ribs, shoulder blades, and so on to create ornamental designs like hearts, spirals, webs, flowers, and crosses.

Similar visual displays of bones in charnel houses, writes art historian Jackie Mann, had become increasingly common in Europe by the late fourteenth century.

The shelving cabinets below the bone decor belong to the second phase of furnishings around 1700. They contain niches that house 112 reliquary busts (most of them produced between 1260 and 1400 and made of polychromed wood), as well as gilded acanthus tendrils that encompass some 600 skulls. Out of reverence, many of the skulls are at least partially wrapped in red velvet with gold and silver embroidery made by the nuns of the nearby Ursuline convent.

Occasionally, where the wrapping has slipped, you’ll see an eye hole staring back at you.

To account for the presence of men’s bones in the ancient Roman churchyard, the legend of St. Ursula was adapted in the twelfth century to include male martyrs—namely, Etherius and his retinue. That’s why the Golden Chamber contains several male busts alongside the female.

To the average person, the Golden Chamber is a weird, macabre spectacle. But for Catholics, displaying human bones is not meant to be creepy or horror-inducing. Rather, by bringing remnants of the dead into spaces of the living, we are reminded of: (1) our own mortality, (2) the community of saints that transcends time, and (3) the promise of universal, bodily resurrection (dem bones gonna rise again!).

Memento mori (“remember you will die”) was a common trope in seventeenth-century art and devotion, meant to increase one’s awareness of the fleetingness of life and to encourage one to live in light of heaven. Mann calls the Golden Chamber an “immersive memento mori.” Again, the traditional Christian summons to remember our mortality is not meant to frighten. It’s meant to inspire us to live whole and holy lives.

While death is an ending in one sense, it’s also an entry into life immortal. The Golden Chamber gathers together the fragments of local saints that had been scattered in ancient burial ruins, preserving them for the saints of later generations as a witness that our bodies will never be finally lost; they will be raised and renewed by God on the last day and reunited with our souls. Christians treat the remains of the deceased with honor in recognition that our bodies—including the framework of bones that support our soft tissues, protect our organs, enable our movement, store minerals for our use, and produce our blood cells—are not just temporary shells encasing who we really are, but rather are a part of who we are. Hence why we proclaim, in the Apostles’ Creed, that “we believe . . . in the resurrection of the body.”

Memorial for the Martyrs of Today

While the Golden Chamber is the primary draw for visitors to the Basilica of St. Ursula, there are other sights in the church worth spending time with, ones I was not expecting. One of them is the Gedenkstätte für die Märtyrer der Gegenwart (Memorial for the Martyrs of Today), a chapel in the south transept that commemorates the Christians in Cologne, both religious and lay, who were killed for resisting the Nazi regime—or, in the case of Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and Elvira Sanders-Platz, for being ethnically Jewish.

Made by the architectural and design firm Kister Scheithauer Gross, the chapel consists of a double-shelled, slightly transparent canvas construction printed on the inside with the names and dates of the martyrs, as well as quotes they gave before their deaths. Sunlight enters from the window to the right of the chapel, causing the space to glow. There’s a small bench on each of the three sides, for people to sit and pray or reflect.

In the center is a life-size wood crucifix. The gaunt Christ figure is pierced all over and bears a deep wound in his side where the centurion’s spear went through. Like those whose names surround him, Jesus preached and pursued love and justice, ultimately laying down his life—a loss that God turned to gain in the Resurrection and in the redemption of the world.

A language barrier prevented me from effectively asking the staff person, or understanding the answer, whether the crucifix was carved in the early 2000s specifically for the chapel, or if it’s medieval. There’s no info inside the church about this chapel.

The Memorial for the Martyrs of Today is an example of what Christian martyrdom looked like in Cologne in the twentieth century. Fr. Otto Müller, Br. Norbert Maria Kubiak, writer Heinrich Ruster, medical student Willi Graf, Catholic Youth leader Adalbert Probst . . . The stories of the many individuals who were executed for subverting Hitler, for calling out his evils, in the name of Christ are far more compelling to me than the fabulous and convoluted story of an ancient princess killed in a land invasion and then heroized—for her virginity?

Contemporary Stained Glass

I also liked the contemporary stained glass in the church. In the choir, there’s a set of eight windows by Wilhelm Buschulte—abstract compositions in yellow, white, and gray.

In the south aisle are two round-arched windows by Will Thonett, also abstract: a grid of blues, grays, and lavender, with yellow circles and thin vertical bands.

To the right of these are three Mary-themed windows by Hermann Gottfried. The primary scene of the first one is the Annunciation. A giant red rose appears in the background, probably a reference to Mary as the Rosa Mystica. Below this scene, to the left, is the Creation of Adam and Eve, and to the right, the Expulsion from Paradise; these contextualize Christ’s conception in the greater narrative of scripture. The peripheral scenes in the middle register show the magi following the star to Bethlehem.

Hermann Gottfried_Annunciation — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

The central window portrays the Coronation of Mary. I believe both figures in the left lancet are Christ—crowning his mother as Queen of Heaven, and at the bottom, crushing the serpent, as the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15 prophesied. Beneath the enthroned Mary on the right is a smaller vignette, which I think may be Mary again, also stepping on the serpent’s head, since by her cooperation with God’s plan, she shares in the victory over Satan. This imagery is also related to Woman of the Apocalypse described in Revelation 12, whom Catholics interpret as Mary. The hand of God dispenses blessing from above.

Hermann Gottfried_Coronation of the Virgin — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

The final window in this trio portrays the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The two quadrants at the bottom right show Moses before the burning bush, in which Mary appears; Catholic teaching compares Mary to the burning bush of Exodus because for nine months she held the fire of divinity within her womb (God incarnate) and was not consumed. On the left Moses is receiving the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai, an event often read in parallel with the story of Pentecost in Acts 2, where God writes his word not on stone but on people’s hearts by giving his Spirit to dwell within them.

Hermann Gottfried_Pentecost — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

If you’re ever in Cologne, I encourage you to include the Basilica of St. Ursula on your itinerary. Entry to the church is free, but the Golden Chamber costs €2 (only cash is accepted, I believe). There are six large standing posters in the narthex that provide a timeline, in German, of the church’s history, and when I was there, there were two attendants who were available to answer questions, one of whom spoke some English.

For more comprehensive photos of the church’s art and architecture, see https://www.sakrale-bauten.de/kirche_koeln_st_ursula.html and https://www.winckelmann-akademie.de/wp-content/uploads/Koeln_St._Ursula.pdf.