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Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

John Block Friedman
John Block Friedman*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

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Articles
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Traditio , Volume 23 , 1967 , pp. 1 - 13
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Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

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3 For detailed description and early bibliography, see Leclercq, H., art. ‘Orphée’, DACL 12.2 (Paris 1936) 2740–2746. I follow the dating of Avi- Yonah, M., ‘Mosaic Pavements in Palestine,’ Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine 2 (1932) 173 n. See also Bagatti, P., ‘Il Mosaico dell' Orfeo a Gerusalemme,’ Rivista d'archeologia Cristiana 28 (1952) 145–160, and Stern, Henri, ‘La Mosaïque d'Orphée de Blanzy-les-Fismes,’ Gallia 13 (1955), who discusses this pavement on pp. 74–75.Google Scholar

4 It may be objected that these two figures were intended to represent not real women but personifications related to the central scene of Orpheus among the animals. While it is true that personifications were often associated with Orpheus-David in the Psalter illustrations of the eleventh century (the well-known illustration in B.N. gr. Coislin 139, for example, shows a sacred pillar rather like the one in our mosaic and the personification Melodia sitting next to Orpheus-David), actually such works have very little in common with the Jerusalem pavement. In them, personifications and nymphs are clearly classicizing figures, partially clothed in classicizing drapery and wearing fillets on their heads. In the Jerusalem mosaic, the figures are fully and modestly dressed in clothes of the sixth century. They bear the rather mundane names of Theodosia and Georgia in contrast to the names found in the Psalters: Nux, Sophia, Prophetia, Melodia. Certainly there is no evidence in the Jerusalem pavement that these figures were not meant to represent real people except for the pillar which seems to me to be nothing more than a pastoral and classicizing touch quite in keeping with the characters of Orpheus, Pan and the centaur. The placement of their medallion between the ossuaria further suggests that Theodosia and Georgia were buried in this tomb and that they either commissioned it before their deaths or were memorialized by relatives or friends after they died.Google Scholar

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19 See for example, the Easter hymn, ‘Morte Christi celebrata,’ AH 8.30 (p. 33), a few verses of which deal with the way in which Christ saved the Church from the underworld and so became ‘Noster Orpheus’ (str. 8b). See also AH 1.115. For a list of pagan figures in medieval hymns, see Szövérffy, Joseph, ‘Klassische Anspielungen und Antike Elemente in Mittelalterlichen Hymnen,’ Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 44 (1962) 152.Google Scholar

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25 Orpheus is to be found with Pan and the centaur, to my knowledge, in only three other late antique works of art. These are: the ivory pyxis from the monastery of Bobbio, published by Natanson, Joseph, Early Christian Ivories (London 1953), pl. 26; a similar pyxis from the Abbey of St. Julien à Brioude and now at the Bargello Museum, Florence, published by Graever, H., ‘Pyxide en os,’ Monuments et mémoires Piot 6 (1899), Fig. 2; and a Coptic textile in the Tyler, R. collection. See Peirce, Hayford and Tyler, Roy all, L'art Byzantine (Paris 1932–1934) II pl. 159a and pp. 120–122. All of these pieces have been dated in the fifth-sixth century and are probably of Alexandrian origin. They are dissimilar to the Jerusalem Orpheus in that Pan and the centaur are merely two among a host of mythological creatures, they show no signs of Christian symbolism, and they have no funerary associations.Google Scholar

26 Theon of Smyrna, Expos, rer. mathem. ad legendum Platonem utilium p. 142 (ed. Hiller, E. [Leipzig 1878]): φησὶ γὰρ ὡσ ‘ερμῆσ ἔτι νέοσ, ἐργασάμενοσ τὴν λύραν, ἔπειτα πρώτωσ εἰσ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνιὼν καὶ παραμείβων τὰ πλανσθαι λεγόμενα, θανμάσασ τὴν διὰ τὴν ύμην τῆσ φορσ αὐτῶν γινομένην ἁρμονίαν τῆ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κατεσκευασμέν λύρ <ὁμοίαν>. .>Google Scholar

27 Macrobius, , Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis 2.3: ‘Nam ideo in hac vita omnis anima musicis sonis capitur; … quia anima in corpus defert memoriam musicae cujus in caelo fuit conscia; et ita delinimentis canticis occupatur ut nullam sit tam immite tam asperum pectus quod non oblectamentorum talium teneatur affectu. hinc aestimo … Orphei … [fabulam] … sumpsisse principium… .’ The English here given is that of Stahl, W. H. in his translation of Macrobius's Commentary (Records of Civilization … 48; New York 1952).Google Scholar

28 Cicero, , De re publica 6.18 (= Somnium Scipionis 5. 2): quod docti homines nervis imitati … aperuere sibi reditum in hunc locum …' Google Scholar

29 ‘negantur animae sine cithara posse ascendere.’ Nock, A. D. suggests that this Lyra may have been a Neopythagorean work for invoking the souls of the dead ( Classical Review 41 [1927] 170). Savage published the gloss in T(ransactions of the) A(merican) P(hilological) A(ssociation) 56 (1925) 235–6.Google Scholar

30 Quintilianus, Aristides, De musica 2.18 (ed. Jahn, Albert, Berlin, 1882): τῶν όργάνων τοίνυν τὰ μὲν διὰ νευρῶν ἡρμοσμένα τῷ τε αἰθερίῳ καὶ ξηρῷ καὶ ἁπλῷ παρόμοια, κόσμον τε τύποι (leg. τόπῳ) καὶ φύσεωσ ψυχικῆσ μέρη (leg. μέρει)… . For my versions and adaptations and my discussion of this dark author I am much indebted to the French translation of parts of the De Musica by Festugière, A. J. in his ‘L'Ame et la musique, d'après Aristide Quintilien,’ TAPA 85 (1954) 55–78. Festugière spoke of a forthcoming edition by Winnington-Ingram, R. P. This has subsequently appeared (Leipzig: Teubner 1963) and the specialist may find the four passages I here cite (notes 30, 31, 32, 34) in the new edition on pp. 90.9, 87.28, 89.23, and 91.27 respectively.Google Scholar

31 έκ τῶν τδε προσλαμβάνει λοιπόν, ὡσ εναι τοῦτο πρῶτον αὐτὴ σῶμά τι φυσικόν, ἔκ τινων ἐπιφανειῶν ὑμενοειδῶν τε καὶ γραμμῶν νευροειδῶν καὶ πνεύματοσ συγκεκροτημένον. Google Scholar

32 τί δὴ θανμαστὸν εἰ τοῖσ κινοῦσι τὰ ὂργανα, νευραῖσ τε καὶ πνεύμασι, σῶμα ὄμοιον ἠ ψυχὴ φύσει λαβοῦσα συγκινεῖται κιουμένοισ, καὶ πνεύματόσ τε ἐμμελῶσ καὶ ἐρρύθμωσ ἠχοῦντοσ τῷ παρ' αὑτὴ πνεύματι συμπάσχει καὶ πληττομένησ νευρσ ἐναρμονίωσ νευραῖσ ταῖσ δίαισ συνηχεῖ τε καὶ συντείνεται….Google Scholar

33 Clement of Alexandria in the Paedogogus 3.11 (PG 8.440ff.; ed. Stählin, O., GCS, Clemens 1, p. 18Iff.), counseled Christians to avoid the flute and pipes, which were instruments of idolators, appealing to animals and the irrational part of man. He said the instrument for the Christian was the lyre: Paed. 3.2.Google Scholar

34 ταῦτα καὶ πυθαγόραν συμβουλεῦσαι τοῖσ ὁμιληταῖσ αὐλοῦ μὲν αἰαθομένοισ ἀκοὴν ὡσ πνεύματι μιανθεῖσαν ἀποκλύζεσθαι, πρὸσ δὲ τὸ λύριον ἐναισίοισ μέλεσι τὰσ τῆσ ψυχῆσ ἀλόγονσ ὁρμὰσ ἀποκαθαίρεσθαι. Google Scholar

35 The pavement was published and its symbolism discussed by Picard, G. ‘Une mosaïque pythagoricienne à El Djem,’ Hommages à Waldemar Déonna (Brussels 1957) 390ff. It is worth noting here that the ‘geometry’ of the Jerusalem mosaic is that of the triangle, with its base made of έπιθυμία, the centaur, and θυμόσ, Pan. Orpheus, at the apex, is νοῦσ. According to Lucian, Vita Auct. 4, the Pythagoreans held that the triangle was a perfect figure. Picard points to a similar geometrical symbolism of the triangle in the composition of the Apollo and Marsyas mosaic. Gronovius, Jacob, Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum (Leyden 1697) Sig. FFF, reproduces a coin from the reign of Antonius Pius which shows Orpheus among the animals; above his lyre is a large triangle.Google Scholar

36 Basil, Saint, Liber de virginitate 7 (PG 30.681, 684). It may be only coincidence that in his attack on wind instruments, Clement of Alexandria mentions that men play tunes on the flute while horses copulate: Paedagogus 2.4.41 (PG 8.440–1; ed Stählin, O., GCS, Clemens 1 p. 182).Google Scholar