Peter Abelard – Art & Theology

It is the day of Resurrection and an auspicious beginning. Let us be made brilliant by the feast and embrace each other. . . .

Yesterday the lamb was slaughtered, and the doorposts were anointed, and the Egyptians lamented the firstborn, and the destroyer passed over us, and the seal was awesome and venerable, and we were walled in by the precious blood. Today we have totally escaped Egypt and Pharaoh the harsh despot and the burdensome overseers, and we have been freed from the clay and the brick-making. And nobody hinders us from celebrating a feast of exodus for the Lord our God. . . .

Yesterday I was crucified with Christ, today I am glorified with him; yesterday I died with him, today I am made alive with him; yesterday I was buried with him, today I rise with him.

—Gregory of Nazianzus, “On Pascha and on His Slowness,” an Easter sermon from ca. 362, trans. Nonna Verna Harrison in Festal Orations by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008)

LOOK: Miniature from the Tomić Psalter

Miriam's Dance — *The prophet Miriam leading the women with timbrels and dances*, from the Tomić Psalter, Bulgaria, ca. 1360. Tempera on paper, 30 × 25 cm. State Historical Museum, Moscow.

This miniature comes from a fourteenth-century illuminated psalter from Bulgaria, a masterpiece of the Tarnovo art school. It’s linked to Psalm 105, which exults in the memory of God bringing Israel up out of Egypt, providing for them in the desert, and establishing them in the promised land. “So he brought his people out with joy, his chosen ones with singing,” the psalmist writes (Ps. 105:43).

More directly, the image is an illustration of Exodus 15:20–21, an episode of female-led worship that occurs just after the crossing of the Red Sea:

And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.

And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

The only percussion instrument mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the timbrel (Heb. toph), or hand drum, consists of a hoop of wood or metal over which the skin of an animal is stretched. Some have jingles around the rim, like the modern tambourine, and some do not. The instrument is associated with women and celebration.

In the visual imagination of the anonymous Tomić Psalter artist, Miriam beats a drum with a stick while two of her companions clash cymbals and other women interlock arms and dance. The artist probably took inspiration from the folk music and dancing of women in his own culture.

LISTEN: “Da Mariae tympanum” (Give Mary a Tambourine) | Words by Peter Abelard, 1130s | Music by Georg Forster, 16th century | Performed by the Augsburg Early Music Ensemble on Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago, 2003

Da Mariae tympanum 
resurrexit Dominus,
Hebraes ad canticum
cantans provocet,
Holocausta carminum
Iacob immolet.

Subvertens Aegyptios,
resurrexit Dominus,
Rubri Maris alveos
replens hostibus,
quos involvit obrutos
undis pelagus.

Dicat tympanistria,
Resurrexit Dominus,
illa quidem altera
re, non nomine,
resurgentem merita
prima cernere.

Cantet carmen dulcius,
resurrexit Dominus,
reliquis fidelibus
mixta feminis,
cum ipsa narrantibus
hoc discipulis.

Deo patri gloria,
resurrexit Dominus,
salus et victoria
Christo Domini;
par honor per saecula
sit Spiritui.

Give Mary a tambourine,
    for the Lord has risen;
as she sings, let her incite
    Hebrew women to song;
let too Jacob sacrifice
    holocausts of songs.

Egyptians he did overwhelm,
    for the Lord has risen,
filled the Red Sea’s submerged caves
    with his enemies,
whom the sea caught and buried
    in the waves below.

Let the timbrel player sing,
    For the Lord has risen,
a second Mary, different in
    her person, not in name,
she deserved to be the first
    to see him risen up.

Let her sing a sweeter song,
    for the Lord has risen,
as she mingles with the rest
    of the faithful women,
who with her proclaim the news
    to the Lord’s disciples.

Glory be to God the Father,
    for the Lord has risen,
health restored and victory
    to the Lord’s anointed;
equal honor through the years
    to the Holy Spirit.

Trans. Peter G. Walsh with Christopher Husch in One Hundred Latin Hymns: Ambrose to Aquinas (Harvard University Press, 2012)

This hymn is from the second book of the Hymnarius Paraclitensis (Hymnary of the Paraclete), a collection of over 130 Latin hymns composed by the French philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard (1079–1142) [previously] for the convent of the Paraclete near Troyes, headed by Héloïse. It imagines Mary Magdalene as the New Miriam (Mary is the anglicized form of the Hebrew Miriam), leading women in song and dance in celebration of God’s victory over the forces of sin and death through the resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

In Christianity, the exodus is interpreted not just as a literal saving act in Israel’s history but also as a prefigurement of the Resurrection. In many churches, Exodus 14, recounting the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea, is part of the Easter liturgy. The Orthodox word for Easter, Pascha—a Greek word from the Hebrew Pesach—itself means “Passover,” further reinforcing the connection between the Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery and the liberation of God’s New Testament people from spiritual bondage, both made possible by the blood of a lamb and requiring passage through the waters—sea versus baptismal.

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’s closest disciples, and it’s she, according to the Gospel of John, to whom he first appeared following his resurrection. He then commissioned her to go tell the other disciples—to beat the drum, as it were, announcing the good news that he is alive. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke have her joined in this task by other faithful women: “the other Mary” and “Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women,” respectively.

I like the image Abelard gives us of Mary Magdalene rousing her female companions with a tambourine, leading them in the song and dance of resurrection. In the new exodus, Christ guides humanity into freedom, from death to life, as Mary praisefully proclaims, across the path he has paved by his own rising. “Resurrexit Dominus!” The men at first disbelieve her testimony . . . but once they see what she’s seen, they, too, rejoice.

The musical setting of Abelard’s text featured above is by the German Renaissance composer and physician Georg Forster (ca. 1510–1568).

. . . carrying the cross by himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him . . .

—John 19:17–18

LOOK: White Mountain by Ihor Paneyko

Paneyko, Ihor_White Mountain — Ihor Paneyko (Игоря Панейка) (Ukrainian, 1957–), *White Mountain*, 2011. Egg tempera on gessoed board.

LISTEN: “Solus ad victimam” (Alone to Sacrifice Thou Goest, Lord) | Original Latin words by Peter Abelard, second quarter of 12th century; English translation by Helen Waddell, 1929 | Music by Kenneth Leighton, 1973 | Performed by St. Olaf Cantorei, dir. John Ferguson, on Hidden in Humbleness: Meditations for Holy Week and Easter, 2010

Alone to sacrifice thou goest, Lord,
Giving thyself to Death, whom thou hast slain.
For us, thy wretched folk, is [there] any word,
Who know that for our sins this is thy pain?

For they are ours, O Lord, our deeds, our deeds.
Why must thou suffer torture for our sin?
Let our hearts suffer for thy passion, Lord,
That very suffering may thy mercy win.

This is that night of tears, the three days’ space,
Sorrow abiding of the eventide,
Until the day break with the risen Christ,
And hearts that sorrowed shall be satisfied.

So may our hearts share in thine anguish, Lord,
That they may sharers of thy glory be.
Heavy with weeping may the three days pass,
To win the laughter of thine Easter Day.

“In Parasceve Domini: III. Nocturno,” whose first line is “Solus ad victimam procedis, Domine,” is a Latin hymn by the French scholastic philosopher, theologian, and poet Peter Abelard (1079–1142). It appears in his collection Hymnarius Paraclitensis—a major contribution to medieval Latin hymnody—and was sung in the night office (Nocturns) of prayers on Good Friday.

Today it is best known through its modern choral setting of the English by British composer and pianist Kenneth Leighton (1929–1988). Dr. David Ouzts, the minister of music and liturgy at Church of the Holy Communion in Memphis, says this is “one of the most effective musical settings of any anthem of the 1,000-plus octavos in our parish music library.” He continues:

This anthem is one of those with harmonies and sonorities that may not sound correct when they are. Worshipers will hear the sparseness of the choir singing in simple same-note octaves, and in the next moment, dissonances between the choral voices will appear.

Though this 12th century text is most certainly a Passiontide text, my favorite aspect is that it foreshadows Easter and the Resurrection.

The wordplay of the music that accompanies “laughter” in the text is notable. The choral voices are high in their tessituras, and the full choir ends literally on a high note, after which the organ accompaniment steals the show with great dissonant chords, only to land on a huge, bright E Major chord.

The hymn invites us to follow Christ to Golgotha, beholding his suffering so that we might be moved to contrition and, clinging to God’s mercy, rise to newness of life—or, as the wonderful last line puts it, “win the laughter of [Christ’s] Easter Day.” The fourth stanza alludes to Romans 8:17, where the apostle Paul writes that we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Paul speaks elsewhere of believers being “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20)—see my visual commentaries on this passage—and “baptized into his death” (Rom. 6:3) as well as being raised with him.

Jesus may have gone “alone to sacrifice”—but the fruits of that sacrifice abound to all who would eat. Praise be to God.

As we enter the Paschal Triduum, let us weep for our sins and for the innocent Lamb who was slain to atone for them. Let us also look with hope toward daybreak.