“For They Know Not What They Do”: Violence in Medieval Passion Iconography

Summary

Even in today's climate of video nasties and cinematic gore, medieval images of torture demand a powerful response. Modern viewers react variously with laughter, disgust, even horror, when confronted with the cartoon-like savagery of a saint being mutilated and torn to pieces; the response is more powerful still when the subject of the image in question is Christ's passion. Perhaps there is no image of the crucifixion that jolts contemporary sensibilities so much as a late-fourteenth-century carved Crucifix from the Corpus Christi Church, Wrocław (formerly Breslau, Germany; now a part of Poland) (fig. 1). It is a supremely provocative and emotive image. More than any painting by Grünewald, more even than Holbein's Dead Christ, the carving demands an immediate response. Taking in the composition, first of all, requires of the beholder that the eyes move incessantly downwards: Christ's veined arms are stretched tensely, locked in a strained bony curve; leaning slightly to one side, the left arm is pulled taut by the weight of the body; the legs bunch up pathetically, struggling against the torso as it sinks downwards. The descending movement of the eyes’ sealed lids of the Redeemer— encircled by a frame of bloody lashes—points toward the most captivating part of the image: the wound in Christ's side (fig. 2).

Closing in upon that infliction (if we can), we see that the wound exudes rich, blobby globules of curdled blood. Unlike the lacerations in conventional crucifixion scenes, which are relatively bloodless in comparison (fig. 3), the gash is fashioned from droplets of blood arranged in neat lines, like a string of glossy pearls or dripping stalactites, echoed in the bloody mass that exudes from the deep cuts which all but obliterate Christ's hands; the entire body is bespattered with miniature scourge wounds, interspersed rhythmically at intervals across the flesh.

How do we approach understanding a culture that put such images at its very center? How are we to comprehend such violent visions? Images of medieval torture are often defended with reference to what Umberto Eco has dubbed “shaggy medievalism,” the idea of the Middle Ages as a barbaric time. In a culture saturated with violence, death, pain, and disease, it is argued by art historians, it was natural that those involved in the patronage, manufacture, and viewing of artifacts like the Wrocław crucifix, should exhibit a profound fascination with flowing blood, torn flesh, and fragmented body parts.