Magyar Egyház, 1972 (51. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1972-06-01 / 6-7. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 11 THE EARTHLY FACE OF CHRIST For nearly two thousand years now, men have been curious to discover the real earthly face of Christ. Even the earliest Christian legends attempted to approximate his earthly face and the Bible itself speaks of Veronica’s cloth which saved the facial lines of the King of Suffering. The Veronica cloth, which is kept in the art collection of the St. Peter Basilica in Rome, has deteriorated to such an extent, that it is almost impossible to recognize the face of Christ, and science has determined that the paintings of the face of Christ which legend attributes to St. Luke the Evangelist, Nikodemus and Ananias are in fact Byzantine works. There is, nonetheless, a great deal of value in these old legends which science can still use and these are the description of Christ which are still extant. These were not necessarily written by those who in fact personally saw Him, but are valuable, nonetheless, because they relate an element of unanimity of views about the exterior appearance of Christ traditionally held by early Christians. The principal data contained in these traditions are: wavy light-brown hair, parted in the middle, as was his beard, serious gray eyes, the straight nose, the sharply hewn features of his face, and tall, perfect build. Such a description is contained in the letter of Lentulus, the Roman governor to the senate. This letter, too, is apocryphal, but it preserves the tradition perfectly and therefore its data are significant: “of tall build — so writes Lentulus — His face is serious and noble, it creates fear and love at the same time, His shoulder length hair is light-brown, parted in the middle in the manner of the Nazarenes, his forehead is without a scratch, and is slightly pink, His nose is straight, His beard abundant, and parted in the middle, His sparkling eyes are gray, His look is serious and uncomplicated.” Though the alleged letter of Lentulus, from the point of view of Christian tradition about Christs’ build indeed contains valuable information, the writings which Eusebus, the church historian, left behind are even more valuable particularly where they report about an ancient statue of Christ. Eusebius was a reliable and serious historian, who died in 340 A.D. and his data are the most valuable and important contributions to the body of fact concerning pictorial representations of Christ. He writes that he went to Paneas, which at the time of Christ was called Ceasarea Philippi and there visited the house where the bleeding woman, the hemopheliac, whom Christ had cured, had lived. He relates seeing a group of statues on a tall pedestal showing the kneeling metal figure of the woman and next to it the erect metal statue of Christ extending His hand over the woman in a healing fashion. This woman had preserved the scene of healing out of gratitude towards the Saviour. The above proves that physical representations of Christ were frequent at the very beginning of Christianity. It is interesting to note, that later on the artistry of the catacombs did not dare to depict the true face of Christ but rather painted Him in the form of an idealized man, undoubtedly due to the necessity of keeping a secret during those days of persecution. Even before Apollo-type Christ pictures were created, symbolic representations of Christ persisted throughout this period; artist would paint certain symbols, recognized by every believer, instead of Christ such as the Christ-monogram, the fish and the good shepherd. The best known pictorial representation of Christ started to be generally circulated at the beginning of the fourth century: the serious looking bearded man. To this day artists zealously guard this tradition. Space does not permit to in detail report on the paintings of Christ, produced by all the artists, but we can generally state, that artists even today represent Christ as a serious looking bearded man. Suffice it for us to point out, that the painting of Dürer showing the crucified Christ, which depicts the king of suffering, and the man of pain has not yet been surpassed in artistic accomplishment and to point to the Christ figure of Munkácsy which rather stresses the divinity of the Saviour in human form. For centuries we have now lived with this accepted pictorial representation of Christ, without having a single artifact at hand which could have substantiated the validity of the Christian tradition. Recently, however, the soil of Jerusalem has produced a sensational find — if in fact sensational is a permissible word in this context — which will have a more profound influence upon the hundreds of millions of Christians than any other electrifying archeological discovery. A Greek dealer of ancient art objects purchased a small alabaster statue, found some twenty-four years ago in Jerusalem, along with many other Greek and Palestinian statues. He did not himself ascertain the value of each object of art, but being an expert, merely knew for certain that the statue truely dated from the Roman period, particularly in view of the officially documented circumstances surrounding the discovery. The statue itself is the representation of a head made of alabaster measuring some 4-1/3” in height. There are three small indentations at the bottom of the head, indicating that at one time it sat atop a
