A reader expressed confusion about the bracketed, hyperlinked “previouslys” that occasionally appear after some names in my blog posts. That’s my shorthand for “Click here to see the blog posts where I’ve previously featured this person.” My archive goes back ten years, so while I never repeat content, it’s inevitable that I’ll occasionally highlight an artist or scholar whose work I’ve highlighted before. The one-word link enables me to instantly connect you to a place to explore more of that artist on this site, which lacks an advanced search mechanism (there’s only a basic search bar—in the sidebar of any post if you’re using a desktop, or at the bottom if you’re on your mobile—as well as a tagging system).
The organization Art and Christianity (A+C) is offering a new Christmas card pack featuring an angel detail of the award-winning East Window at St. John’s Tisbury, Wiltshire, by stained glass artist Thomas Denny [previously], installed last year. The theme of the full window, whose central scene is the Transfiguration, is “seeing”—seeing the glory of God, and the epiphanies in ordinary and extraordinary moments in life. View more photos of the window, and read the artist’s statement, here.
Thomas Denny (British, 1956–), East Window (detail), St John’s Tisbury, Wiltshire, England, 2025. Photo: James O. Davies.
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HANDS-ON WORKSHOP: “Embodying Advent: Making Unique Nativities” with Steven Homestead, November 19, 2026, Curate by Space in the Gap, Kaleidoscope center, Mission Viejo, CA: My friend Steven Homestead [previously] is an artist, composer, writer, curator, and arts leader from Orange County, California, who regularly brings people together around art—whether through cofounding the Network of Christians in Visual Arts (NCVA), creating community-based installations, contributing to Biola University’s annual arts devotionals, or organizing arts festivals and other events.
Nativity by Leilani Smith
In two weeks, he’s leading an in-person workshop in which participants will create nativities using the art of assemblage. “Creating manger scenes using assemblage is fitting,” he writes, “because through the Incarnation, Jesus stepped directly into the coarse, tangible, and often fragmented reality of our material world. As we gather found pieces and use them to create nativities—whether with broken bits, discarded items, or meaningful mementos—we participate in a physical parable of Advent. We are reminded that God takes the messy, everyday stuff of creation and weaves it into something holy, revealing glory right in the midst of our human experience.”
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INTERVIEW: “Arcabas,” conducted by Misjonarze Saletyni:The last time I featured the artist Arcabas, a reader alerted me to this thirty-minute interview of his that the Missionaries of La Salette recorded in his studio in 2016, two years before his death. It’s in French, but professionally translated closed captioning is available in English.
Arcabas (French, 1926–2018), Pèlerins d’Emmaüs (Pilgrims of Emmaus), 1994. Oil and gold leaf on canvas, overall 110 × 560 cm. Chiesa della Resurrezione (Church of the Resurrection), Torre de’ Roveri, Bergamo, Italy. Left to right: Along the Road, Opening the Scriptures, The Welcome, Preparations, The Meal, The Disappearance, The Return.Designed by architect Renzo Pedrini, the Cappella della Riconciliazione (Chapel of Reconciliation) in Costa Serina, Bergamo, Italy, was converted from an old stable. Arcabas made the door, the altar, six stained glass windows, and two oil paintings: a Madonna and Child and, the room’s centerpiece, The Prodigal Son. [view more photos]
Arcabas discusses how his understanding of faith has evolved, why he doesn’t consider himself a “sacred” artist, the extraordinary poetry of the Gospels, the importance of “living the symbols,” and the role of humor in art. He also discusses specific artworks, including:
The Prodigal Son in the Chapel of Reconciliation in Costa Serina, Bergamo, Italy;
his work for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of La Salette in Isère, France—namely, the Christ Pantocrator in the apse, the Wedding at Cana polyptych, Mary’s Swoon at the Foot of the Cross, The Virgin of La Salette, and his two stained glass windows in the sanctuary’s Chapel of the Encounter;
Église Saint-Hugues-de-Chartreuse, France, a forty-year project;
and the painting that’s behind him during the interview, showing a donkey, mounted by a monkey(!), warming the infant Christ with his breath. (He playfully tells us the donkey greedily wanted a portrait of just him, not the ox.)
Three songs about relinquishing anxiety and resting in God’s loving care.
>> “Come Bring Your Burdens to God”: Originally written in Xhosa during the apartheid era in South Africa, “Woza Nomthwalo Wakho” (Come Bring Your Burdens to God) was popularized in the West by Rev. Dr. John L. Bell of the Iona Community in Scotland [previously]. It’s one of many global Christian songs he collected and had recorded by the Wild Goose Collective, which is where I first heard it. In this video, the Heatwole family, American Anabaptists living in Coyhaique, Chile, sing it at their church, Hermanos del Nuevo Pacto en Cristo (Brethren of the New Covenant in Christ).
>> “On God’s Shoulders” by Paul Zach: This is a fragment of a song written by Paul Zach [previously] and friends in preparation for the 2023 Porter’s Gate album Message Songs, inspired by Eugene Peterson’s best-selling colloquial translation of the Bible. But it apparently ended up on the cutting-room floor. It’s based on Psalm 55:22 (MSG): “Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders—he’ll carry your load, he’ll help you out. He’ll never let good people topple into ruin.”
>> “Sparrow” by Candace Coker: Another song that I don’t think has ever been released on an album. Trinidad-born singer-songwriter Candace Coker [previously] wrote it in 2017, inspired by one of Jesus’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount about God’s providence (Matt. 10:29–31; Luke 12:6–7).
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.
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 and workshop, Anna Selbdritt, ca. 1500. Limewood, traces of polychromy.
Here’s another:
Tilman Riemenschneider, Anna Selbdritt, from a church in Kitzingen, ca. 1495. Gray sandstone.
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:
Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, Parts of a Holy Kinship, ca. 1505. Limewood, painted.Saint Anne, from a Holy Kinship group
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 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, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, left side of south portal.Tilman Riemenschneider, Eve, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, right side of south portal.Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, John the Baptist, 1500–1506. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, buttress to the right of the south portal.Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, Madonna and Child on a Crescent Moon, ca. 1515. Limewood, originally painted.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 (fragment from a Lamentation group), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.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 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!
Adoration of the Magi, Württemberg-Franconia, ca. 1525. Probably part of an altarpiece wing.
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.”
Vesperbild (Pietà), Würzburg, ca. 1360. Wood with remnants of old paint. From the former Scottish Monastery in Würzburg.
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.
Circle of the Wolfskeel Master, Gnadenstuhl (Throne of Grace), from the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist, Würzburg, ca. 1340
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.
Palmesel (Palm Donkey), Franconia, first half of 16th century
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, 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.
Brother Martinus Schwarz, Saint Margaret (altar wing), ca. 1485. Mixed media on softwood. Probably from a chapel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.
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.
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.
Late this August, my husband and I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there traveled south, spending nine days in the state of Bavaria. I built our itinerary mainly around religious art I’d been wanting to see, an interest my husband indulges and even appreciates (just not to the same degree I do!).
Bavaria is most associated with the Baroque and Rococo art and architectural styles, which are not styles I gravitate to. I was on the lookout for medieval treasures mostly, but with an openness to surprises.
I planned for us to stop in the city of Würzburg en route from Frankfurt to Rothenburg ob der Tauber because I wanted to see a unique fifteenth-century tympanum relief in the north portal of the Roman Catholic Marienkapelle (pronounced ma-REE-en-kah-PEL-lay), or St. Mary’s Chapel, depicting one of my favorite Gospel stories. More on that below.
Situated in the town’s Marktplatz (market square), the Marienkapelle is a late Gothic place of worship built in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was heavily damaged by an Allied bombing raid on March 16, 1945—the same raid that, in less than twenty minutes, destroyed 90 percent of the historic city and killed an estimated five thousand people—and was rebuilt and restored in 1948–61.
Various little “swallow shops,” selling gifts and pastries, are built into the exterior base and buttresses.
Because of the building’s size and central location, the Marienkapelle is often mistaken for Würzburg’s cathedral, but it is not: A cathedral is the official seat of a diocesan bishop, and that’s St. Kilian’s, a five-minute walk away. In fact, the Marienkapelle is not even technically a church, according to canon law, because it does not have its own independent parish. It’s legally classified as a “chapel.” However, it is a church in the loose sense of the word, as it hosts regular worship services, administered by the united parishes of St. Kilian’s and Neumünster, which we’ll visit in separate posts.
Thankfully, although the Royal Air Force incendiaries destroyed the timber-framed interior of the Marienkapelle, the heavy masonry portals and recessed entryways largely protected the medieval relief carvings on the exterior.
The tympanum of the main, west portal, through which you enter the chapel, portrays the Last Judgment. Jesus Christ is seated on a rainbow throne, being crowned by an angel. Drawing on Revelation 1:16 and 19:15, two swords protrude from his mouth, the one on his right a (likely mistaken) departure from traditional iconography, which has a lily instead, symbolizing mercy, which acts alongside his justice.
He is flanked by angels carrying instruments of his passion—a cross, a column and whip—and two others blowing trumpets, which wakes the dead from their graves. Mother Mary and John the Baptist intercede for those rising to judgment.
On Christ’s right (our left) are the blessed, and on his left (our right) are the damned, being dragged by a hairy devil into a gaping hellmouth. Among the latter group are kings, knights, and bishops, showing that wealth and institutional status earn you no favors with God, and that outward acts of piety or noble deeds count for nothing if they proceed out of an impure heart.
I love the detail at the bottom of people’s skeletons taking on flesh as they push aside the lids of their coffins! This is the general resurrection, the promised reuniting of body and soul prefigured in Ezekiel 37.
On the trumeau (central pillar) of the west portal stands a copy of a stone Madonna and Child from around 1441; the original is located inside the chapel. The Christ child holds an apple.
Another entrance to the church is on the south side.
The south tympanum portrays the Coronation of Mary, an extrabiblical subject that grew out of the belief that if Jesus is the King of kings, Mary is the queen mother. To either side of them are St. Barbara, holding a chalice, and St. Catherine of Alexandria, holding the breaking wheel on which she was sentenced to be executed.
The most striking feature of the south portal is the Adam and Eve sculpture pair by the preeminent German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531). Exquisite! Carved in gray sandstone, they are actually copies (all the freestanding sculptures on the exterior are); the originals, from 1493, are in the Museum für Franken, also in Würzburg—which I’ll share about in part 4. Adam and Eve stand on plinths decorated with foliage, sheltered under tabernacles (tower-like crowning structures).
In addition to these, Riemenschneider and his workshop supplied sculptures of the twelve apostles for the buttresses, and of Christ and John the Baptist, who are situated above Adam and Eve. Christ, as Salvator Mundi, holds a globe, and John the Baptist holds a lamb, a symbol of the self-sacrificial Christ, who takes away the sin of the world.
But now, what I consider the most thrilling artwork at the Marienkapelle, immensely amusing, is the Annunciation tympanum in the north portal, carved around 1430.
It’s in the least prominent of all three portals, tucked away off the main square, next to, when I was there, a fence banner advertising a local wine festival. No one was stopping to look at it.
View from the north portal
But I knew to search it out—this peculiar carving that visualizes the theological idea, introduced in the fourth century and solidified in the fifth, that Mary conceived Jesus through her sense of hearing. Known as the conceptio per aurem, this teaching stems from a typological connection between Eve and Mary: Whereas Eve listened to the serpent’s lies and conceived death, Mary listened to the angel’s truth and conceived life. The teaching presents Mary as a model of attentive listening to God’s word, which produces fruit; for receiving it into ourselves, bearing it about. It also serves to desexualize the encounter between Mary and Gabriel, focusing attention away from Mary’s genital region and onto her head.
Look at how this artist visualizes the conception by ear! God the Father sits at the top center inside a flowery mandorla, blowing into a serpentine tube that’s attached to Mary’s ear. As he does, a gleefully naked infant Christ glides down the tube on his belly like it’s a waterslide—only it’s not water that’s propelling him; it’s the Father’s breath.
Journeying down this transdimensional slide, he twists and turns and plunges right into his chosen mother’s open auditory canal, where the Holy Spirit as dove enunciates a sacred whisper: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus . . .” All three persons of the Trinity are present at this moment—their number echoed by the three-branched lily in the vase on the floor.
Behind Mary, two angels hold up a cloth of state, befitting royalty.
The conceptio per aurem was developed in both the East and the West by Christian writers and preachers such as Ephrem of Syria, Augustine of Hippo, Theodotus of Ancyra, Proclus of Constantinople, Cyrus of Panopolis, Zeno of Verona, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Bernard of Clairvaux. To learn more, I recommend the excellent book Divine Conception: The Art of the Annunciation by Sarah Drummond (Unicorn, 2019) and Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Homilies 1–5 by Nicholas Constas (Brill, 2003), each of which devotes an entire chapter to the motif.
Also on the exterior of the Marienkapelle are a handful of fantastical creatures in the jambs and archivolts and under corbels, and red sandstone grotesques on the eaves.
Moving inside, the locally quarried pink and white sandstone columns that support the rib vault down the length of the nave are lovely. So are the post–World War II stained glass windows in the choir. But the main visual attraction is the high altarpiece, painted by an unidentified Franconian artist in 1514.
The central scene, consisting of two panels, shows the Annunciation, set inside a well-appointed domestic interior. Mary is interrupted from her prayers by a ruddy-faced messenger, whose banner bears his greeting: “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”
The left wing depicts the Nativity inside a half-built or dilapidated structure that’s exposed to the elements. Mary has laid the infant Christ on the ground, cushioning him as much as possible with her extended cloak. Shepherds peep through the metal bars of the window, craning their necks to see. An ox and ass have front-row seats. Joseph holds a candle, and a trio of angels sing from a song sheet.
The right wing depicts the Adoration of the Magi. The three foreign men of means present gifts to the Christ child while their entourages stand by patiently in the background. As is traditional, one of them is portrayed as Black.
Stay tuned for my next Würzburg post, where I’ll share photos from Neumünster, a church that was on my radar because of the unusual crucifix that hangs above one of its side altars.
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.
The “Goldene Tafel” (Golden Panel), made for the church of St. Michael’s monastery in Lüneburg, Germany, ca. 1420–30. Tempera and gold leaf on oak, each panel 231 × 184 cm (overall 231 × 736 cm). Landesmuseum Hannover, Germany, WM XXIII, 27. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 CrucifixionThe 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 HellThe 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 AscensionChrist 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.
Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990), The Life of Christ, 1990. Bronze altarpiece with white gold leaf patina, 81 × 60 × 2 in. Edition of 9. Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. All photos by Victoria Emily Jones.
Keith Haring [previously] was a popular artist and activist on the New York scene during the 1980s. Inspired by graffiti art, he started his career by filling empty poster spaces with chalk drawings in the city’s subway stations. He wanted to make art accessible to everyone and believed that it “should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.”
His style is characterized by bold black outlines, vibrant colors, a sense of rhythm, and simple iconic figures like the Barking Dog and Radiant Baby, which recur again and again in his oeuvre.
Sadly, Haring’s career was cut short by AIDS, which he died of on February 16, 1990, at age thirty-one. The last work he completed, just weeks before his death, was a Life of Christ altarpiece, a work that conveys eternal love and loss, divine suffering and hope. Without any preliminary sketches, he cut the design into clay using a loop knife. It was posthumously cast in bronze and covered in a white gold patina, an edition of nine.
The first edition is housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the world’s fourth-largest church by area, where Haring’s memorial service was held.
Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, designed by the architectural firm Heins & LaFarge, dedicated 1911. The stained glass windows are by Wilbur Burnham of Boston and Clayton & Bell of London, and the altarpiece, a later addition, is by Keith Haring.
Pulsating, cosmic, and somehow both mournful and joyous, the altarpiece is a triptych, meaning it has three panels. The central panel shows, at the top, a cross, below which is a multiarmed figure holding a baby. The top figure I interpret as God the Father, his arms all-embracing. Below him, at torso level, I discern a second figure (though the head is not clearly defined), who must be Mary, a shining heart over her face. Nestled in her arms is, irrefutably, her infant son Jesus.
Another possible reading is that this is the Trinity—Father, Spirit, and Son—united in an act of self-giving.
The surplus of arms (I count thirteen, plus the baby’s two) reminds me of the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara in Buddhism; a bodhisattva associated with limitless compassion, his arms represent his extending aid, his reaching out to touch, heal, and uplift. One of the arms here stretches down to bestow a halo on humankind, which in Christianity symbolizes the grace/light of God.
Below this primary grouping is a crowd of people who appear to me to be dancing and celebrating, lifting their arms to receive the blessings that flow forth from the holy child. (Or are they clamoring, turning away, resisting? Without facial features and fingers, it’s hard to tell!) Drops of Jesus’s blood fall over all, bringing redemption.
On the two side panels, angels careen down from the heavens, surfing, leaping, tumbling, one screeching to a halt.
Haring’s Life of Christ combines, as have many artworks before it, Jesus’s birth and death, collapsing his time on earth, his ministry of salvation, into a single image of incarnation and atonement. Mary holds him as a newborn, but she also holds him as a lifeless adult after his crucifixion—a traditional representation known as the Pietà. Many artists have given Mary a sad twinge in her eye at the nativity, suggesting a premonition of loss.
Haring’s figures are faceless, so we can’t look there for emotional clues, but Mary’s body language suggests both a desire to keep and protect her son, and a willingness to give him up for the greater good.
I wonder whether, when Haring incised the sacred blood drops, he was not only thinking of the “power in the blood” that Christians sing about in reference to Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice—and all the weight that bodily fluid as Christian symbol carries—but also lamenting the HIV infecting his own bloodstream, ravaging his body and stigmatizing him, and that had already killed many of his friends and his partner.
Haring’s friend Sam Havadtoy, who was present at the altar’s creation, reports that when Haring finished the piece, he stepped back and, gazing at it, said, “Man, this is really heavy.”
I think the prominence of blood must have been at least partly influenced by the destructiveness of the AIDS epidemic and the artist’s meditation on his mortality, perhaps even hope for transcendence through death. And if so, then the Radiant Baby, who, the artist’s title would lead us to assume, is Jesus, could also double as the soul of an AIDS victim being taken back up to God.
While I hesitate to ascribe prayers or intentions to others that they have not clearly voiced, I can’t help but think that this last artwork of Haring’s, executed in the final throes of his illness, its subject returning him to the Christianity of his youth, to a story that once captivated him, was in one sense a plea for (physical and spiritual?) cleansing, for deliverance.
LISTEN: “We Sing Glory” by Fred Hammond, on Fred Hammond Christmas . . . : Just Remember (2001)
Little baby boy, sent as God among us For your plan to free all humanity We sing glory to your name Sing glory to your name
Tiny fragile heart Pumped your blood to save us For you’ve come to be a sin offering Singing glory to the Lamb Sing glory to the Lamb
Singing glory to the one Who saved the whole world Born to die but you live again And take all our sins away
Little hands and feet Made for nail and hammer For the pain and grief you suffered for me I sing glory to the Lamb Oh, glory to the Lamb
Tiny arms and legs Broad, strong, and sturdy You carry the key to our victory We sing glory to your name We sing glory to your name
We sing glory to the Child Who will save the whole world Born to die and then live again To take all our sins away
Glory, glory to the one Who was born to save the whole world You died but you’ll rise again So Jesus, we praise your name
Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinner reconciled Thank you, Jesus
Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild God has come to save us Yes, he has
Jörg Länger (German, 1964–), Chr. Geb., 2006. Linocut, wax, oil, and graphite pencil on paper, 33 × 33 cm, cast with resin between two Optiwhite sheets of glass, 38 × 38 cm.
The contemporary German artist Jörg Länger creates extraordinary mixed-media works, many of which are in dialogue with Christian art history. In addition to earning an advanced degree in art, Länger has also done university coursework in theology and philosophy, so it’s no wonder his pieces demonstrate a keen theological awareness and spiritual sensibility.
After some fifteen years of working in photography, installation art, performance art, and conceptual art, in 1998 Länger shifted gears to focus on drawing, painting, and printmaking. He developed a series, still ongoing, that he calls “Protagonisten aus 23.000 Jahren Kulturgeschichte” (Protagonists from 23,000 Years of Cultural History), in which he takes figures from prehistoric petroglyphs and bas-reliefs, ancient Greek vases, medieval manuscripts, European Renaissance paintings, and contemporary art, simplifies them, and puts them into a new pictorial context. He copies the figure’s outline onto a linoleum block, inks and prints it to produce a sort of silhouette, and builds out from there using oil paint, pastels, wax, and/or gold leaf, while still retaining a minimalist aesthetic.
In his 2006 piece Chr. Geb. (short for Geburt Christi, “Birth of Christ”), the silhouetted figures are taken from Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece and Fra Angelico’s Entombment of Christ.
Matthais Grünewald (German, ca. 1475/80–1528), The Nativity, central panel (first open view) of the Isenheim Altarpiece, 1515. Oil on wood, 269 × 307 cm. Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France. Photo: Steven Zucker.Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1400–1455), Entombment of Christ, 1438–40. Tempera on wood, 37.9 × 46.6 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
With the shadowy blue central pair of Mother and Child, the ghostly impression of Christ’s crucified body (being lifted into a tomb in the scene it’s excised from), the expanding puddle of gold that holds together both birth and death, and the light that presses in from the edges, the work has a mystical feel. It shows the Eternal One entering time, born of a woman, to live and die and rise and so bring humanity back to God and back to their truest selves.
LISTEN: “O Vis Aeternitatis” by Hildegard of Bingen, ca. 1140–60 | Performed by Azam Ali, 2020
V. O vis aeternitatis que omnia ordinasti in corde tuo, per Verbum tuum omnia creata sunt sicut voluisti, et ipsum Verbum tuum induit carnem in formatione illa que educta est de Adam.
R. Et sic indumenta ipsius a maximo dolore abstersa sunt.
V. O quam magna est benignitas Salvatoris, qui omnia liberavit per incarnationem suam, quam divinitas exspiravit sine vinculo peccati.
R. Et sic indumenta ipsius a maximo dolore abstersa sunt.
V. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui sancto.
R. Et sic indumenta ipsius a maximo dolore abstersa sunt.
V. O power within Eternity: All things you held in order in your heart, and through your Word were all created according to your will. And then your very Word was clothed within that form of flesh from Adam born.
R. And so his garments were washed and cleansed from greatest suffering.
V. How great the Savior’s goodness is! For he has freed all things by his own Incarnation, which divinity breathed forth unchained by any sin.
R. And so his garments were washed and cleansed by greatest suffering.
V. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
R. And so his garments were washed and cleansed by greatest suffering.
Hildegard of Bingen [previously] was a twelfth-century German nun and polymath who wrote works on theology, medicine, and natural history; hymns, antiphons, and a drama for the liturgy (all with original music); and one of the largest bodies of letters to survive from the Middle Ages. In 1136 she was unanimously elected to lead her Benedictine community as abbess, which she did until her death in 1179.
“O vis aeternitatis” is the first entry in Hildegard’s Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations), a compilation of her liturgical songs that she made during her lifetime. It is labeled a “Responsory to the Creator.” “The responsory, one of several compositional forms Hildegard used,” explains medievalist Nathaniel M. Campbell, “is a series of solo verses [marked V] alternating with choral responses [marked R] sung at the first office of the day, vigils (matins), in the monastic liturgy.” It’s basically a call-and-response song.
This responsory, Campbell continues, “contemplate[s] the Incarnation . . . as the pivotal moment in which creation reached its perfect and predestined trajectory.” He notes how the refrain meditates on the cleansing of Adam’s flesh both from suffering and by (Christ’s) suffering. God put on our humanity and redeemed it.
Here’s how the medievalist Barbara Newman translates the responsory on page 99 of the critical edition of the Symphonia published by Cornell University Press:
Strength of the everlasting! In your heart you invented order. Then you spoke the word and all that you ordered was, just as you wished.
And your word put on vestments woven of flesh cut from a woman born of Adam to bleach the agony out of his clothes.
The Savior is grand and kind! From the breath of God he took flesh unfettered (for sin was not in it) to set everything free and bleach the agony out of his clothes.
Glorify the Father, the Spirit, and the Son.
He bleached the agony out of his clothes.
In the video above, “O vis aeternitatis” is performed by Azam Ali, an internationally acclaimed singer, producer, and composer who was born in Iran and raised in India and is now based in Los Angeles. She writes in the video’s YouTube description that Hildegard is part of the canon of universal spirituality and mysticism and that she is attracted to her cosmology, especially her articulation of the ancient philosophical concept of “the music of the spheres.”
In addition to her solo work, Ali is part of the musical group Niyaz, who blend medieval Sufi poetry and ancient Middle Eastern folk songs with modern electronic and trance music.
Joseph Stella (American, 1877–1946), Nativity, 1919–20. Oil pastel and oil on paper, 37 × 19 5/16 in. (94 × 49.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Julian’s room. Christmas Day; early morn.
JULIAN. The light comes feebly, slowly, to the world On this one day that blesses all the year, Just as it comes on any other day: A feeble child He came, yet not the less Brought godlike childhood to the aged earth, Where nothing now is common anymore. All things hitherto proclaimed God: The wide-spread air; the luminous mist that hid The far horizon of the fading sea; The low persistent music evermore Flung down upon the sands, and at the base Of the great rocks that hold it as a cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But men heard not, they knew not God in these[.] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But when He came in poverty, and low, A real man to half-unreal men, A man whose human thoughts were all divine, The head and upturned face of humankind— Then God shone forth from all the lowly earth, And men began to read their Maker there. Now the Divine descends, pervading all. Earth is no more a banishment from heaven, But a lone field among the distant hills, Well ploughed and sown, whence corn is gathered home. Now, now we feel the holy mystery That permeates all being: all is God’s; And my poor life is terribly sublime. Where’er I look, I am alone in God, As this round world is wrapt in folding space; Behind, before, begin and end in Him: So all beginnings and all ends are hid; And He is hid in me, and I in Him. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O centre of all forms! O concord’s home! O world alive in one condensèd world! O face of Him, in whose heart lay concealed The fountain thought of all this kingdom of heaven! Lord, Thou art infinite, and I am Thine! I sought my God; I pressed importunate; I spoke to Him, I cried, and in my heart It seemed He answered me. I said, “O, take Me nigh to Thee, Thou mighty life of life! I faint, I die; I am a child alone ’Mid the wild storm, the brooding desert night.” “Go thou, poor child, to Him who once, like thee, Trod the highways and deserts of the world.” “Thou sendest me then, wretched, from Thy sight! Thou wilt not have me—I am not worth Thy care!” “I send thee not away; child, think not so; From the cloud resting on the mountain peak, I call to guide thee in the path by which Thou mayst come soonest home unto my heart. I, I am leading thee. Think not of Him As He were one and I were one; in Him Thou wilt find me, for He and I are one. Learn thou to worship at his lowly shrine, And see that God dwelleth in lowliness.”
This passage is excerpted from part 3, scene 10 of Within and Without: A Dramatic Poem by George MacDonald, a verse play that, in 1855, was the author’s first published work.
George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a prolific Scottish writer across the genres of adult and children’s fantasy, realistic fiction, theology, poetry, and literary essay. He was the founding father of modern fantasy literature (Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Lilith and his best-known works), a mentor to fellow writer Lewis Carroll (he was a catalyst to Carroll’s publishing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), and a great influence on C. S. Lewis (who cites his writings as instrumental in his conversion to Christianity). MacDonald served for a few years as a Congregational minister, but his preaching about God’s universal love and the ultimate salvation of all (apokatastasis) rubbed against the staunchly Calvinist grain of his time and place; after resigning his pastoral post in Arundel, England, he continued preaching without pay as a layman, as well as weaving his theological views into his fiction.
In today’s Christmas devotional, there’s a convergence of three Native cultures of Turtle Island (North America): Jemez, Dakelh, and Kwakwaka’wakw.
LOOK: Jemez Nativity by Maxine Toya
Maxine Toya (Jemez Pueblo, 1948–), Jemez Nativity, 2014. Polychrome pottery figures, red micaceous slip, tallest figure 8 1/2 inches high. Photo: Blair Clark, courtesy of Susan’s Christmas Shop, Santa Fe.
A granddaughter of Persingula Gachupin and a daughter of Marie Romero (both eminent Jemez Pueblo potters), Maxine Toya grew up assisting her family with pottery chores and painting. She began making her own pottery in 1974 and is one of the most renowned living potters from Jemez Pueblo, a census-designated place in Sandoval County, New Mexico. She has won numerous awards at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market, which every August brings together a thousand-plus Indigenous artists from more than two hundred tribal nations to exhibit and sell their work.
I learned about this artist from the wonderful book Nativities of the Southwest by Susan Topp Weber, the owner and operator of Susan’s Christmas Shop in Santa Fe. The book compiles dozens of nativities made with local clays and other materials by Pueblo Indians, Navajo Indians, and Spanish and Anglo artists of New Mexico and Arizona. Maxine Toya’s nativity appears on page 47. Weber writes,
Maxine’s donkey in this nativity has a blanket painted with a fringe similar to the one made by her mother, Marie [see page 46]. . . . She sometimes combines her figures into groups. Her standing figures all have closed eyes. The carefully painted detail distinguishes this nativity, as well as the sweet little Pueblo drummer boy with his drumstick raised in the air. The angel’s wings have a lovely feather design.
You can watch Maxine Toya give a pottery demonstration with her daughter Domnique Toya, also a potter, in this 2022 video from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. (I cued it up to Maxine’s first section.)
Cheryl Bear (DMin, The King’s University) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, speaker, and workshop leader from Nadleh Whut’en First Nation in central British Columbia, whose work explores the intersection of Christian faith and First Nations cultures. She is a founding board member of NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community (formerly the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies), an organization that addresses biblical, theological, and ethical issues from Indigenous perspectives. She travels throughout North America telling the Great Story of Jesus both within and outside Indigenous communities, bringing to bear her Indigenous worldview and values.
Bear’s song “Welcome Our Creator” is from her sophomore album, The Good Road. It opens with a drumbeat and then her singing a series of vocables (small nonlexical “words” without semantic meaning). “The song is played to the drum beat of my people,” the Dakelh (Carrier), she writes in the liner notes. “I use the words ‘Gilakas’la Gikumi’ from the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation,” which translate to “Welcome our Creator.”
The song’s title on the CD sleeve and in online metadata does not have a comma, suggesting that the phrase, if interpreted in relation to Christmas, is an exhortation to give Jesus welcome, to gladly and hospitably receive him. But it could also be sung as a greeting to the incarnate God himself: “Welcome, our Creator!”
Outside the Christmas context, the song might be sung during an assembly as an acknowledgment of Creator’s presence.
Gerard David (Netherlandish, ca. 1455–1523), The Nativity, early 1480s. Oil on wood, 18 3/4 × 13 1/2 in. (47.6 × 34.3 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
LISTEN: “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger” | Words by Christopher Smart, 1765 | Music by Linda L. Hanson, 2012 | Performed by Fire (women’s a cappella chamber ensemble), 2020
Where is this stupendous Stranger? Prophets, shepherds, kings, advise! Lead me to my Master’s manger, Show me where my Savior lies.
O most mighty, O most holy, Far beyond the seraph’s thought, Are you then so mean and lowly As unheeded prophets taught?
O the magnitude of meekness, Worth from worth immortal sprung! O the strength of infant weakness, If eternal is so young!
God all-bounteous, all-creative, Whom no ills from good dissuade, You have come to be a native Of the very world you made.
The four verses of this Christmas hymn are excerpted from a nine-stanza poem by Christopher Smart [previously] published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England (London, 1765). The poem was recovered in the twentieth century and since then has received multiple new musical settings—by composers such as I-to Loh, Charles Heaton, Conrad Susa, Joan A. Fyock, Leo Nestor, Alec Wyton, Thomas Gibbs Jr., Scott M. Hyslop, and Jacques Cohen—as well as pairings with older tunes.
My favorite setting of the text is by Linda L. Hanson, the founding director of Fire, a women’s a cappella chamber ensemble in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group performs the hymn in the video above, which Fire member Mary Welby von Thelen spliced together from thirteen solitary recordings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hanson is in the top row, the third from the left.
The alliterative opening line of the hymn asks where the “stupendous Stranger” can be found—the divine one sent from heaven. Stupendous isn’t an adjective we use often. It means “causing astonishment or wonder: awesome, marvelous.” The poetic speaker begs the prophets, shepherds, and magi to divulge the location of the Christ child so that he can go and worship him.
The next two stanzas marvel at the paradoxes of the Incarnation—how Christ is “mighty” and “holy,” beyond the comprehension of even the angels, and yet “mean” (humble) and “lowly,” lying here in the dirt before us, visible, tangible, vulnerable, no longer far above us but in our very midst. What “magnitude of meekness,” what “strength of infant weakness.” The eternal one is born in time.
The omnibenevolent Creator has deigned to become part of his creation. No potential ill that he will suffer as a result—and he will suffer many and grievous ills, culminating in death by crucifixion—can deter him from making his beloved earth his home.
Hanson has generously allowed me to share the sheet music of “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger,” and says the hymn can be freely used by local church congregations. Anything outside that context will require her permission.
