From the Tree to the Labyrinth (48 page)

We will not go so far as to say—overestimating the influence of mnemonic techniques—that the entire apocalyptic tradition is nothing more than an attempt to embody in memorable images a few moral and eschatological principles. But we feel confident in asserting that the medieval passion for apocalyptic
imagerie
is partly the result of the influence of the ancient arts of memory.

Beatus’s attitude toward the text, then, was the opposite of that of the modern interpreter: the scenes must be transposed into visual images, the interpreter must be concerned with the resulting pictorial effect, because the cryptography, the mystical enigma, depend on that effect. And if there are ten horns and seven heads, we must ask ourselves how these numbers, incongruous in themselves, can be represented congruously. The problem for the illuminator, who must solve the problem pictorially, is the same as that for the commentator, who must solve it symbolically. And the commentators often find themselves stymied because they are endeavoring to translate the text with an illustrator’s mentality. Beatus’s
Commentarius
is a glaring example of this predicament.

Let us see how this impulse to translate the text into clear visual images leads our scrutinist to misrepresent the text. We will start from the beginning, from John’s vision of the one seated on a throne and the four beasts (
chapter 4
) and from its most likely source: Ezekiel’s vision in the book that bears his name (Ezek. 1:4–26).

Ezekiel speaks of a whirlwind coming out of the north: and a great cloud, and a fire infolding it, and brightness about it: and out of the midst thereof, that is, out of the midst of the fire, “as it were the resemblance of amber.” And in the midst thereof the likeness of four living creatures and this was their appearance: there was the likeness of a man in them. Every one had four faces and four wings, straight feet and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot, and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides. And these four living creatures turned not when they went but went straight forward.

So far so good. Up to now the vision looks like something that can be pictured. But at this point the prophet declares that, in addition to the face of a man, the creatures had the face of a lion on the right side and the face of an ox on the left side, and they also had the face of an eagle. Their wings were stretched upward, two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. Their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps.

Another confusing fact: although Ezekiel had said (twice) that they turned not when they went and all four went straight forward, he now informs us that the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning, and behold one wheel on the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces, And the appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl, and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. And they went in four directions, and they turned not when they went, and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up, and “whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels” (Ezek. 1:20).

As we will have occasion to observe in a moment, it is clear that Ezekiel is not, so to speak, indulging in ekphrasis, but recounting a series of oneiric events. But let us proceed with our reading of his text: now above the firmament that was over the living creatures’ heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. “And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain.” “This,” declares Ezekiel, “was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake” (Ezek. 1:27–28).

This is the same vision that appears, in an abridged form, in Apocalypse 4:2–8, with the difference that John seems to start where Ezekiel left off. The throne in the firmament appears right away, and on the throne someone is seated, similar in appearance to a jasper and a sardine stone. A rainbow like an emerald surrounds the throne. Around the throne are twenty-four seats and upon the seats are seated twenty-four elders clothed in white raiment, with crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne (before which burn seven lamps of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God) proceed lightnings and thunderings and voices. Before the throne is a sea of glass like crystal. “
In the midst of the throne and round about the throne
were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within …” (Apoc. 4:6–8).
⁷

At first blush John’s text appears to be a copy of Ezekiel’s, except for the fact that in Ezekiel each of the living creatures had the face of all four animals. John makes the same vision easier to picture: each of the beasts has the face of a different animal. In Ezekiel the creatures have four wings, in John six,
⁸
and naturally Beatus, after expressing his amazement that the wings are not part of the normal endowments of the four animals (including the eagle, which is only supposed to have two), indulges in the usual allegorical interpretations. Furthermore, the eyes are not on the wheels, or on the wings of the four beasts, but on the beasts themselves (and the Greek text of the Apocalypse in any case confirms this reading).

Nevertheless, John does not entirely succeed in escaping the influence of the text of Ezekiel. Before the throne is a transparent sea like crystal, and “in the midst of the throne and round about the throne” are the elders. The same expression is found in the Latin text used by Beatus (“in medio throni et in circuitu throni”). The expression seems to be obscure, because on the throne is the One Seated, and it is difficult to see how the elders can be in the midst of the throne at the same time. To resolve this embarrassing contradiction, a modern commentator, Angelini (1969), eliminates the second mention of the throne and translates in such a way that the elders seem to be, not in the midst of the throne, but in the midst of the sea of crystal that stretches before the throne: “Facing the throne stretched a billowing sea of transparent crystal, and in the midst and around were four beasts full of eyes in front and behind.” A violence done to the text to make it more reasonable. But why should a vision be reasonable?

Not surprisingly, at this point a perplexed Beatus remarks that “quaestio oritur” (“a question arises”), and he gets out of it by revealing that what the text sometimes refers to as a throne and sometimes as a seat is none other than the Church, upon which obviously is seated Christ our Lord, but in which dwell, thanks to his largesse, also the gospels, the Evangelists, and the elders, who cannot be said to dwell outside the Church.

An elegant solution perhaps, but at odds with the rest of his exegetical method, which is that of “visualizing” or projecting the facts of the story in space. For proof of our contention, we have only to look at the illuminators, who are not sure how to get around it and represent this topological problem variously in different images.

For instance, in the
Beatus
of Ferdinand and Sancha of Madrid—and this is also the case in the majority of the other
Beati
—the limited space available leads the illustrator to reduce the number of the elders from twelve to eight, and there is only one wheel placed in the center. As in many
Beati,
the Seated One is depicted as a lamb (because Beatus identifies him as Christ), but it is not clear whether or not the eyes are represented, whether, that is, the eyes are to be interpreted as the ones around the throne of the lamb or those that appear on the wings of the four
animalia.
What is more important, however, is that the illuminator fails to render the sense of movement that the words of the text suggest, that the four beasts, that is, are evidently on the move, and appear now in the midst of and now around the throne (
Figure 6.1
).

Figure 6.1

A more interesting case is that of the
Beatus
of San Millán, in which, with a fine torsion of the figures that has an expressionist feel to it, the illuminator at least tries to convey the movement of the beasts: he does not have them mount
onto
the throne, but he does manage to suggest their whirling motion around the throne of the Lamb (
Figure 6.2
).

Figure 6.2

In the
Beatus
of San Severo (
Figure 6.3
), the artist endeavors to convey somehow the movement of at least one of the four beasts, showing the lion about to invade the circular area around the throne.

Figure 6.3

Medieval culture has no trouble translating biblical texts into images, because its roots are in Greek culture, which is eminently visual. Every epiphany of the sacred in classical Greece occurs in the form of an image and—for obvious reasons—of a fixed image. It is no accident if the literary genre of ekphrasis—the minutely detailed description of statues and pictures, so as to render them, through the skilled use of verbal language, practically visible—has its origin and development in Greek culture. Hebrew culture, on the other hand, was eminently oral. In Plato’s
Timaeus
the Demiurge creates the universe using geometrical figures, whereas in the Bible it is by means of a verbal act that God creates the world. The Greeks
saw
their gods; Moses only
hears
God’s voice.

Now a voice can certainly evoke images, but those images will not be necessarily immobile. On the other hand, while both Ezekiel and John claim to have had a vision, they do not say that what they saw was a gallery of fixed images. And it is significant that they do not speak in the present tense, as someone does when they are describing a picture that they still have before their eyes, but in the past or the imperfect, as we might do if we were narrating a dream in which the events came one after the other. Every visionary experience is of necessity oneiric, and what the Seer sees has the same sense of
flou
and lack of preciseness as what we see in a dream. Today we would say that the vision takes the form of a
cinematographic
event, in which the images occur one after the other. This is why it is possible to see the Seated One on a throne, upon whose image, through a series of fade-outs, the living creatures are then superimposed, and, in the following sequence, in which everything has changed position, the Seated One again on the throne, the living creatures around it, and the Lamb between them. All of the Apocalypse has this dreamlike rhythm: events occur more than once—the beast is given up for dead and once again we see it in combat, Babylon is said to have collapsed and it is still there awaiting its castigation, and so on.