|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
figure 4
figure 5
| |
I want to underscore a point that will recur
later in my talk. Jerusalem
was, historically, the setting for the story of Christ’s Passion,
and Jerusalem was the projected setting for Christ’s return at the
Second Coming, and New Jerusalem promised beatific existence
after the Second Coming. Jerusalem was a potent, multivalent
symbol. Jerusalem was also, for Egypt, part of a developing ecclesiastical
network that was very real. And, in ecclesiastical politics,
Alexandria often rivaled Jerusalem.
The Ascension panel follows a by-now venerable
two-zoned scheme, placing, in the upper zone, Christ, held aloft
by two angels, and Christ is surrounded by a mandorla—in essence
a full-body halo—and in the lower zone, two more angels, Mary, and
the apostles stand displaying their amazement by their gestures.
[figure 4] An
earlier example of this compositional type, shown here, is from
the late sixth or seventh century from a Coptic monastery in Upper
Egypt at a site called Bawit. It is a painting in the apse of
one of the monastery’s
chapels. After the Ascension, the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit
descended upon the apostles like tongues of flame, endowing them
with powers to speak to all the people of the world. [figure
5] Then, the Anastasis, also
known as the Descent into Limbo or the Harrowing of Hell: before
the gaze of crowds of the saved, at right and left, Christ pulls
Adam and Eve from their opened tomb while trampling down the
doors of Hell over Satan, who is being bound by two angels.
The liturgical year reflects a
new sense of time in Christian belief, which runs a cyclical
course until the end, Christ’s
return for the final salvation of humankind. The liturgical
year also united the far-flung Christian community. Even
in its sense of time, Christian Egypt was not separate from
the rest of the Christian Greek East. During the earliest
centuries of Christianity, this new conception of time took
precedence over older pagan calendars. From this revolution
in time there developed a genre of history writing called the
chronicle, that aimed to present the history of salvation from
Creation down to the author’s time.
Concomitant with the reconceptualization of history was the resacralization
of space in the world, which sometimes involved the destruction—therefore
desecration—of pre-existing pagan sites, temples, and cult
statues. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
