L.A.M.A.,
of Elvio Lunghi
Medieval commentators on the sacred Scriptures formulated four interpretive approaches to sacred texts, by means of which history's divine plan could be explained, from the six days of creation, to the seventh day of the fall and redemption, and on to the eight day, the end of secular time and the beginning of the kingdom of God. The Divine Word, revealed to man through the voices of the prophets and thanks to the incarnation of the "Son of Man," expressed itself by means of signs and parables. Paul, the apostle, had already assumed the role of explicator and commentator, confronting and rendering comprehensible to the many the evangelical paradox, declaring the Christ was truly the Messiah promised to Abraham, and that by means of his Sacred Cross the world had been redeemed from Adam's original sin. The end of time, the Apocalypse, had been revealed in a book written by the favorite disciple, John who, in a language rich in suggestive images, had evoked the forces of evil's final attempt to rule the earth, through the final triumph of the Second Coming. As they waited for His return in heavenly glory, the return announced by Christ to the poor fishermen of Palestine, scores of monks engaged in the attempt to decipher in the created world signs which heralded the coming of the eighth day. If this did not lead to the realization of the promise, which still awaits its conclusion, it did, nonetheless, give rise to the complex science of biblical exegesis. The first interpretive approach leads us to consider literal and historical meaning: littera gesta docet, the letter teaches history. But biblical texts do not only recount the vicissitudes of the chosen people; they also announce, by means of metaphors and allegories God's plan for human history: quid credas allegoria , a mystery which gives meaning to faith. The language of the Cross anticipates the Kingdom of God on earth and helps man to correct the errors of original sin: moralis quid agis, codes of behavior to observe. The ultimate end is divine vision, towards which the human mind must aspire with all its force: qui tendas anagogia, the supreme things to which we aspire. These four sorts of readings, then, correspond to the literal or historical meaning, the allegorical or figurative meaning, the tropologic or moral meaning, and the anagogic or mystical meaning. These approaches were applied to every single passage and word of the sacred texts and shed light upon the typological similarities of the old and new testaments. To give an example, the Dominican, Saint Thomas of Aquinas, in his commentary on the fiat lux passage in Genesis, explains that, in the literal sense, this meant material light, in the allegorical sense, the arrival of Christ in the Church, in the moral sense, Christ's illumination of the intellect and emotions, in the anagogic sense, the vision of divine glory. These refined methods of reading were applied frequently, too, in the iconographic programs of churches, which signified the Kingdom of God realized on earth, an anticipation of the vision of His celestial glory. Significant, too, is a passage from the Franciscan, Saint Bonaventure da Bagnoregio which take on the words in Ecclesistes, Qui creavit me requievit in tabernaculo meo: in the literal sense, these indicate Mary's womb which physically contains Christ, in the allegorical sense, they indicate the Church, where Christ is preserved sacramentally, in the moral sense, they indicate the soul of the faithful, where Christ is spiritually preserved, in the anagogic sense, they indicate the celestial court where Christ is eternally present. The meaning of this quadruple significance was lost with the affirmation, at the end of the Medieval period, of the Devoto moderna, which privileged a private and individual dimension of spirituality, characterized by a note of sobriety and realism -- in more recent times, due, too, to the effects of a rampant material. But if we examine with attention the icongraphic programs of sacred edifices built before this occurred, it is easy enough to see how the visible universe was connected to divine prophecy. Unfortunately, this system of interpretation has suffered greatly at the hands of art historians in modern times, whether believers or not, through an unhappy encounter with a famous passage in Gregorio Magno where, in a letter to the Bishop of Marseilles, he stressed the importance of images present in churches as a Biblia pauperum , a Bible that is, for the illiterate who, not knowing how to, or not having the opportunity to, read sacred texts could, by means of these images, learn about the lives of the saints and the last mysteries. This passage was, inappropriately, extended to all images present in churches, without it being taken into consideration that only a part of these were intended for the populace. Perhaps the last edifice where the quadruple approach was used to generate an iconographic program was the Upper Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi; in later Franciscan churches, or in those constructed for other mendicant orders, no further trace of it appears, thanks primarily to the invasion of private tombs decorated with images of private devotion. The frescoed walls and figured stained-glass windows of the Upper Basilica develop an extremely refined iconographic program which is simplistically explained, both in guided tours and art history books, and becomes little more than a mere list of stories and names of painters. In short: everything is reduced to the life of St. Francis, frescoed by Giotto -- but are we really sure that it was Giotto who was the principle author of this celebrated cycle, which involved at least three or four extremely talented painters, all rigorously anonymous -- almost as if these stories were entrusted with the task of introducing the saint and founder of the Minorite Order to the devout pilgrims who come to visit his sepulchral church. Anyone who has entered at least once the Upper Basilica's vast papal hall will find it hard to forget the disoreintation one feels as one goes from this stoine edifice's bright otuside wall to its interior's highly colored and translucent surfaces. The best description of this phenomenon is the account, in John's Apolalcypse, of the vision of the Heavenly Jersualemn, an account which insipred all the cathedral builders, including those who constructed the Baislica of St. Francis. "The walls aee all made of jasper and the city of pure gold, similiar to sparkling crystal. The bases of the city walls are adorned with every sort of precious stone: the first is of jasper, the second of saphyre, the third of bronze, The city has no need for the light of the sun, nor the light of the moon, for the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb." But when the visitor to Assisi's church tries to identify the subjects of the stories represented here, he becomes aware, with regret, of his own limitations, because he finds himself gazing, not at the beginning, but at the middle of the narration; he must walk the entire length of the nave to find the first episode which begins the story of St. Francis's life, to be read from left to right, continuing along the church's whole perimeter. It is true that the itinerary recommended to today's pilgrims starts with the entrance into the lower church and then proceeds to the upper church by means of the transept stairs, so that the visitor first sees The Simple Man's Homage to St. Francis (the first fresco of the cycle), but this was not possible in antiquity, when access to the apse was by means of stairs carved out inside the small towers, and the nave was closed off by a sort of stage-landing at the height of the last pair of pilasters. From this, I deduce that the iconographic program's inventor was not so much interested in the instruction of the illiterate who came in through the front doors as in the explication of future things, the last mysteries. The allegorical approach comes to fruition here when we observe the typological correspondences first between the mythical story of Creation and the patriarchs' heroic deeds with Christ's life, both represented in the higher registers of the wall, the biblical prophesy clarified in the New Testament scenes below it and both actualized in the lower third register in the life of the cross undertaken by Saint Francis: each bay of the nave should be read, then, in this direction, from above to below, from God to man, under the auspices of the apostles -- symbols of the church -- shining forth in the stained-glass windows. The moral approach bears fruit, in the Basilica, in certain episodes from the life of St. Francis, placed in strategic positions along the walls. As we enter the church, the first episode which we encounter on our left -- it's unnecessary to remind ourselves here, of the habit which had led us, since writing's invention, to privilege, when we read, the left side, that is, by reading it first -- the episode of the death of the Knight of Celano. The story is well-known: Francis was invited to lunch by a nobleman from Celano but, before taking a seat at the table, he invited his host to confess his sins, which he promptly did -- to the friar who had accompanied the saint. Once seated at the table, the knight, with no warning, died. In his treatise on miracles, Tommaso da Celano comments upon this episode with praise for the sacrament of confession, and indeed, this is the message entrusted to this painting. The three post mortem miracles which conclude the Franciscan Legend draw attention to the zelus animarum which St. Francis always championed -- unlike the oldest panel paintings which depict those miracles of the saint in which miraculous cures of the lame or the sick who visit his tomb are performed, with the invitation to confess and repent. Certian episodes from the life of the blessed Angela da Foligno introduce us to the anagogic interpretation, the interpretation of the mystics. When Angela visited Assisi, in the last decade of the 13th century, the decoration of the Upper Church must have been already finished, or was, at least, acquiring its final touches, and yet the mystic does not seem to take any interest in the beauty of the paintings. Her biographer tells us that he began to record the story of Angela's visions after having been present at an unpleasant incident which occurred, in fact, right here inside the Basilica of St. Francis, when the woman began to shout in church and was tossed out by the friars., Later on, a friar asked her to explain what had occurred and Angela described the vision she had received of St. Francis held in Christ arms. The biographer further notes that Angela had seen a painted image in her vision and, in effect, this very subject, it turns out, is depicted on a stained-glass window just to the left of the lower church's entrance. That the biographer was not amazed by this coincidence -- the resemblance between Angela's vision and the stained-glass window -- has an explanation; the window was designed with just this aim in mind to elicit a mystical ascension towards the sacred and the divine -- the word anagogia means literally the ascent on high; and in fact other of Angela's recorded visions are exact description of stained-glass windows or paintings on the upper, better-lit walls of this edifice. All of Medieval Society lived in perennial expectation of the divine vision, and the church erected over the tomb of St. Francis, an image of the new Jerusalem, became, in the words of Saint Bonaventure, the image of Christ's tabernacle, present in the Eucharist and rendered actual by the alter Christus. What wrong was there in someone's being actually able to see the celestia mysteria ventura, ascending per visibilia ad invisibilia? This is how the iconographic program of St. Francis should be understood and explained to the intelligence of the readers of Assisi. That's the way it is, if that's the way I like it.