The Cross and Other Images

In his recent paper ‘The Latin West in the Period of Transition from “the Late Roman Empire” to “Early Medieval Europe”: Consolidation and Innovation’[1] T O’Loughlin claims that the introduction of monasticism in early medieval Europe produced a two-tier Christianity in which ‘holiness’ was ‘outsourced’ to monks. This paper argues that a much closer alignment with Cassian’s vision of the pastoral role of the contemplative bishop in the wider community is found in Bede’s Life of Cuthbert than this assessment allows, and to briefly suggest that the Northumbrian high crosses at Ruthwell and Bewcastle acted not just as sanctifying icons, but also as foci of monastic preaching and contemplation for the purpose of communicating the Gospel to the surrounding lay communities. Subtle differences in the iconographies of the two crosses, such as the location of the inhabited vinescrolls on the (presumed) north and south faces of the Ruthwell cross contrasted with the single vinescroll on the east face of the Bewcastle cross, and the seven scrolls of the Ruthwell vines compared with the eight of the Bewcastle vine, may suggest differences in the purposes of the crosses while demonstrating inculturation and communicating the same theological telos of the transformation of all creation through baptism and the Eucharist.

A small corpus of writings against images, including three long texts - the letters to the emperor Theodosius and to John bishop of Jerusalem and the so-called Tractatus contra eos qui imagines faciunt  - and two minor passages,  has been attributed to the name of Epiphanius, who was bishop of Salamis (Cyprus) in the second half of the fourth century. Within the horizon of the Early Christian literature, these texts are quite exceptional, since they discuss the issue of Christian images in length and they seem to anticipate the arguments of the Iconomachs in a truly astonishing way. Such anachronistic character and the fact that the iconophobic fragments are preserved only within sources tied to the Iconoclastic Controversy (except for the letter to John of Jerusalem, translated into Latin by Jerome) aroused an extensive and still open scholarly debate about the authenticity. The current paper intends to examine these iconophobic writings focusing particularly on a crucial issue, namely the explicit mention of image-worship, a phenomenon that, according to some recent and authoritative studies on Iconoclasm, developed not earlier than the seventh century. The comparative analysis of the texts attributed to Epiphanius and of other testimonies assigned to the late fourth-early fifth centuries can shed further light on the iconophobic writings and on the origins of the Christian cult of images.