Theology Images
| Just thought I would toss up a post of some interesting stuff from a class I am taking in History of Christianity (thought it might be good to get a new Harry Potter content related post in here sometime, and not just pictures of the Bronx.) Some interesting stuff I was not expecting to find. For this first week in this class we had to read Justin Martyr's First Apology, Eusebius' Life of Constantine (part of it) and the Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, and it is from this last that there are some very interesting things (apologies if somebody on the web somewhere has already covered this material ... which I am sure they have ... it's just the first I had seen it). The Scar Perpetua was a noblewoman and Felicitas was her maid servant and they were martyred by fighting animals in the arena. Perpetua has a number of visions concerning her martyrdom and those of other catechumenates who were martyred with her. But one of the visions was also of a brother of hers who had, and I think died of, a cancer of the face. She sees him first with the disfigurement and then again healed ... but with a scar on his face/forehead (Ie, after his death but with the scar remaining as a sort of "marturia," which originally means "witness" in Greek). His death from disease is one of a number of parallels with her martyrdom (including her own giving birth days before being martyred ... which is described as one bathing in blood connected with her baptism by blood in martyrdom.) I'm not saying I think anything conclusive from this about our favorite boy with a scar on his forehead, that he will die ... nor even that I necessarily suspect that Rowling definitely knows of this image or would have had it in mind when she developed a story of a boy with a scar, that she has said ends with "scar" as the last word. But I do find it a high coincidence that you have this image of a scar as a remaining sign of a affliction literarily connected with a martyrs death, when we know that in book &, even if Harry does not die the martyr's death he will have to make some pretty heroic self-sacrifices. I don't know whether Rowling would have studied this work in her schooling at Exeter, but I do know that in this class (which is one of the core courses for the MA in Theology here, which I have to take, even though I am a PhD candidate, to sort of fill in some weak areas in my MA) there are several people who are taking the class as part of required coursework for the MA in Medieval Studies, so it is definitely possible Rowling would have studied this work in classics studies. Gender Issues The other interesting vision in the work is a vision of Perpetua's own martyrdom in which she must wrestle "an Egyptian" who is really big and basically symbolizes the uber-opponent who you can't beat (but she does, but of course the "beating" is through the transformation of the true victory in martydom, in learning to do well and gloriously that which we are all subject to - accepting death: to die well, to quote William Wallace.) In Greco-Roman wrestling they would strip you down naked and oil you up for wrestling, which would be unchaste for a woman, and so she looks down and, in the vision, she is a man. One of the girls in the class who is MA Theology, with whom I have gotten to be friends (and who is graciously helping me and another PhD student out with German, since she is in the class but also had some German in undergrad ... I agree with Mark Twain on the German Language) mentioned the theme of transcending gender and an ancient view, noted especially in Aristotle's characterization of the female gender as a "mis-begotten male," of men being better and more intellectual and women lesser and more tied to the earthy through their biological capacities. This made me think of two things. The first is that, true to what Granger is saying about Rowling as Post-Modern, she has reversed the poles (challenged the meta-narrative.) It is Ron, the male, who is the earth-bound, sulfuric biological soul and Hermione who is the intellectual soul. The second is that Granger has hit upon this whole thing of gender issues and the andro-gyn character in PoMo lit ... I can't remember if that is the exact word he uses but, if I understood correctly he was not speaking of the typical "androgynous" that we think of these days ... somebody like Hagrid is definitely masculine, in a bigger than life way (the distinct descriptions of what seems like more facial hair than Esau) but the "mothering" characteristics he has for creatures such as Norbert can fit in with this in a way that is natural, like both sides being fully themselves, not the sort of "gray area" we think of as "androgyny." And I think "more power to Jo" on challenging that one ... I love Aristotle but some ideas need to be challenged because they're just wrong. Anyway ... just a few interesting thoughts and observations from History of Christianity class. Did you notice, true to my new fascination with Granger's work on Rowling as both classicist and PoMo ... one from the classics imagery emphasis and one from the PoMo emphasis ... but the one from the PoMo showing how it is also PreMo? |
Comments on "Theology Images"
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Pauli said ... (September 13, 2006 11:27 AM)
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Merlin said ... (September 13, 2006 12:52 PM)
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Cubeland Mystic said ... (September 13, 2006 2:59 PM)
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Anonymous said ... (September 14, 2006 7:25 PM)
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Merlin said ... (September 14, 2006 10:40 PM)
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Pauli said ... (September 14, 2006 10:42 PM)
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Pauli said ... (September 14, 2006 10:46 PM)
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Merlin said ... (September 14, 2006 10:46 PM)
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Merlin said ... (September 14, 2006 11:00 PM)
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Pauli said ... (September 14, 2006 11:08 PM)
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Cubeland Mystic said ... (September 15, 2006 12:42 AM)
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Cubeland Mystic said ... (September 15, 2006 12:46 AM)
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Merlin said ... (September 15, 2006 12:55 PM)
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Cubeland Mystic said ... (September 17, 2006 2:43 AM)
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Merlin said ... (September 17, 2006 12:59 PM)
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Merlin said ... (September 17, 2006 1:07 PM)
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post a commentReminded me of St. Wilgefortis, interestingly enough falsely accused of witchcraft and crucified. Everyone remembers her for miraculously sprouting a beard when she was going to be forced to marry against her vow of virginity. Her name means "strong virgin" -- kind of a natural androgyny of sorts, ya think?
Yeah. I was looking at that page to see if it gave her time frame but it didn't. The reason I wondered was that we were going through in that class the distinction between pre-Constantinian hagiography (writing, accounts and live of the saints) and post-Constantinian and one of the major marks being that in pre the standard mark of holiness was martydom and in post it is ascetical/monastic consecrated virginity (a difference seen in some of the details in the account of Perpetua, who is eventually stripped naked and then re-covered is not modesty but the fact that it is the bloodthirsty crowd who asks that she be re-covered because her breasts are still leaking from having just given birth and the crowd wants its blood-sport but does not want to be reminded that it is a new mother, a human being, who is being killed ... although later there is a scene where her tunic is torn and pulled up when she gets knocked down by the mad heifer and she pulls it back down to cover herself below the waiste out of modesty). In Saint W. you seem to have both, which was why I was wondering the timeframe.
It's not ironclad but some of the in between areas are ... in between. The fact that Christ never married (by orthodox account) and the mention of the virgins and what kind of virgins they were meant to be, as symbols, and to what degree ascetical virginity was practiced; the use of language of men "marrying their virgins" if it would be too tempting not to, in Paul (does it mean a "Josephite" marriage ... was Joseph's marriage to Mary originally meant to be one of sort of celibate marriage of patronage or did Mary simply remain virgin once they knew that the child she carried was the Incarnation ... stuff that, to the best of my knowledge, the Church has not declared one way or the other on)
I wasn't going to post another comment at all right now because I need to be working on Hebrew and German but decided to because it (the distinction between virginity and popped something else into my head, that there is a connection with what I said, or at least was trying to say, in an old post on Ginny's name (http://www.mugglematters.com/2005/10/rowling-and-consecrated-virgins.html).
Some such has Granger have speculated it being from "Virginia" but Rowling has distinctly negated this and said it comes from Guinevere (however you spell it ... Arhtur's wife). The first line on this is that there is nothing of "avoidance" in her conscious construction of the name - it fits with all of the royal and Arthurian names in the Weasley family (not that I think Ginny will be an unfaithful woman, as in some of the Arthurian legends, but it makes sense for the boy who pulled the sword from the hat to be paired with one of the same name as she who married the boy who pulled the sword from the stone etc).
The second line though is the whole PoMo thing. I think that Rowling did, at least sub-consciously, mean some form of virginal purity in the name (and particulary the innocence of it in the context of a very Molech type image in COS), but that she is justifiably wary of letting that be known for the same reason she is backing off CS Lewis connection and all. It's kind of sad to me, because you have a bunch of people on both sides looking for "standard bearers," really mouthpieces in an "us and them" war (note some of Granger's comments on the PoMo aversion to preachiness of any sort and the term "us" - which seems always to imply, at least these days, "look at how we are different from them ... us=good; them=bad"). Some people have taken the Inklings thing too far and tried to make Rowling into a
But I do think that in Ginny (especially in her fiery scenes and attitude in HBP) we get this thing that is becoming a "regular" woman and pairs off against the "virgin" thing in COS and yields a rich concept of "purity" that can have expression in both consecrated virginity and marriage (being as she is not carrying, nor will ever carry, God in the flesh in her womb, which would be completely outside of the construct of the story and world, I would not expect her to be both perpetual virgin and married mother ... although I woud expect her to be married mother and faithfully chaste [assuming our boy makes it to the end] ... here chastity meaning what it really means, rather than being synomomous with virginity/abstinence, which is the common misconception ... in a healthy marriage the continual use of a "chastity belt" would not be at all condusive to actual chastity)
A comment on the "scar". This is very similar to Frodo's wound in LOTR. He felt the physical pain from the wound and the emotional pain from the ring until he left middle earth.
The scar is a very powerful motif in writing. I often wonder if Tolkien recalled his experiences of WWI when writing about Frodo's wounds.
There are physical scars from war, but there are also the emotional scars that one carries throughout their life. They are just as painful as physical scars—perhaps even more painful. He had both. It is not a stretch to conclude that Frodo was a martyr. He was.
I read Perpetua in State University, while I was not a believer. It is a foundational document of our faith. She is remembered in the litany. I would not be surprised if the scar influenced by Tolkien. I did not read the books, but Harry often touches his forehead in pain in the movies when encountering evil. This is why I make the assertion.
Hello. Where are you pursuing your PhD studies?
Kevin Stilley
http://righteousjudgment.blogspot.com/
Kevin,
I'm concentrating in Old Testament in the Biblical Studies track of Fordham University's ("The Jesuit University in NYC") Theology program, so I am in the Bronx (the excitement never ends here).
I just realized in looking over some of that longer comment that I forgot to finish a thought, or at least clarify it. I was saying that the marked difference in hagriography is between martyrdom as the standard sign of holines and consecrated virginity/ascetical monasticism as the standard sign. But that is not to say there was no question of consecrated virginity before that, but our main examples are extremely unique examples that go beyond "general" sainthood - Christ and Mary (with the attending question of whether Mary was consecrated to virginity before her marriage to Joseph and it was a "Josephite" marriage, one of the standard supports for which is the Pauline text on "better to marry than to burn" whith regards to a man's "virgin" ... and then there is the question of the nature of the wise and foolish virgins in the wedding parable) ... all that to say that I am not saying consecrated virginity is never a question before Constantine and Christianity becoming the religion of the empire ... but in hagiography there is a definitive shift in what is the most standard "mark," at least in terms of the literature, of holiness(Perpetua being a pre-Constantinian work, where virginity is not examined and one can assume from some of the details it was not a concern in hagiography yet) ... by the time of St Sir Thomas More you have More noted for fighting against the prevalent idea that if you really wanted to live a sanctified life you became a priest or nun ... marriage was basically the "safe" path for those who could not go without.
Kevin, thanks for the link. Merlin is up at Fordham University in the Bronx.
Good thoughts on Harry/Frodo, CM. Interesting also is that Gandalf, I believe, mentions that Frodo possibly survived his wound because he called upon Elbereth, a feminine member of the Valar (AKA Varda in the Silmarillion), a character Tolkien acknowledged to be inspired by the Blessed Virgin, and hearing her name probably brought the pain to the ole Witch King. Harry was perserved by his own mother's sacrifice. The Witch King is later undone by a small person (Hobbit) and a woman. Voldemort is undone my a mother/child. So there is a lot of parallel stuff there.
I also like some comparisons with Revelation chapter 12 which my mind snaps to immediately when considering all these characters as symbols: woman, child, serpent. Check this out: vss. 13 & 14 the dragon is pursuing the woman and he opens his mouth in vs. 15. What's going to come out of the dragon's mouth? fire, right? No: "And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman, water as it were a river; that he might cause her to be carried away by the river." Interesting. The earth and ait elements (eagles wings) help the good side, then chapter 13 has the beast coming out of the sea. So evil in this part of the Apocalypse is allied with the water element a la Slytherin.
One more thing: a significant difference between Frodo's wound and Harry's scar is that Frodo is culpable to some degree for his injury. His putting on the ring made him visible to the evil forces right before they attacked. Harry was an innocent baby when he was attacked.
Looks like a simultaneous post practically!
I'll attest that marriage can hardly be "safe" when your kids remind you of yourself. Merlin knows what I'm talking about, too. 8^)
CM,
Yeah, in the goings on here back and forth over the scar being a Horcrux I must admit, that while one of my main arguments for it being such has been the pain when experiencing Voldy's psychic states and the possibility of Naginni being an HC and the scar being the material connection on his end that couple with Nag as the material connection on Voldy's end, being what facilitates the legiliemency (Voldy and Harry's minds/souls connected through two intermediary HC's, the snake and the scar) ... an idea which Felicity is very opposed to, and I am not necessarily hardline on, it's just one of those things I have definitely thought to be possible ... I must admit that something that arises from your comments is equally possible (although not necessarily mutually exclusive with the other), that the scar is an amplifier and lens through which Harry experiences a focussing of evil, of all the pain caused by it etc.
Just a though that hit me when you mentioned the forehead touching in the movies.
That imagery of the dragon and Rev 12 (I discovered in a footnote of the Perpetua text that the word actually comes all the way from the Greek drakone) and the Genesis 3:15 is used several times in Perpetua's visions. she steps on the head of a dragon at the foot of a ladder, using it as a first rung, on her way following up the ladder that is surrounded by all sorts of war and torture tools ... later this is revealed to be the steps in the arena leading to the platform where those who are sentenced receive the final death blow, where she is described as steadying the shaking hand of her young executioner so tha the may do his duty.
Also, this is off from our precedented set of characters we're tlaking about here, and is from an author we have talked about here in contrast to JKR (and who, learning that he wrote certain other books, I now more hold him in contrast to JKR in some of his stuff) ... but John Irving uses the missing limb/digit/appendage thing alot in A Prayer For Owen Meany. He has it being a thing of being a more effective pointer and revealer/agent ... for example, the 1st perosn narrator John has Owen (on Owen's suggestion) use a diamond cutting wheel to cut of his right index finger in order to avoid going to Vietnam (trigger finger missing below a ceratin joint, which Owen himself knows as an army officer) ... when John moves to Canada they ask if he is avoiding the war and he can honestly say no because he already had that taken care of, but he finds that when he points directions to a lost car on a country road the missing finger is a much more effective pointer - people pay more attention to it.
all that to sort of synthesize Pauli's and CM's statements. Frodo's finger is missing out of culpability, unlike Harry's scar ... but both do have a "marturia" aspect, but of slightly different sorts (the missing limb being a more striking pointer, maybe even because of the culpability/volitional aspect and the scar being a witness of evil suffered without culpability).
Merlin, good stuff re: Perpetua -- the early Christian hagiographic literature is shot through with so much apocalyptic imagery. Maybe we could get our good Sicilian friend to weigh in on this stuff, right up his alley.
I think that primarily the wound which CM referred to was the stab wound from the Morgul blade, not the lost finger.
The finger did not occur to me. There are two wounds. First, the shoulder wound received at Weathertop (sp?), and second, Frodo's woundedness from carrying the ring. Tolkein implied that even Sam may feel its effects from the short time he carried the ring in Mordor.
This notion of spiritual woundedness, bridges to a discussion on the culture of death and its impact on the soul. That would be the darkening of the soul. Christ throws us a rope otherwise we would drift into shadow and become wraiths.
Maybe I will write an essay about this topic on my blog?
Just really quickly because I have a class in 10 minutes ... but I like the language, CM, of ropes and drifting ... sea imagery - because I have been talking with a good friend about the character of Bootstrap Bill in the PotC movies as a wounded character "the weight of the water crushing down ... unable to move ... unable to die" (from DMC) and the instances of land and their pairings in DMC ... the sea of Jones and the Kraken vs the wetlands of Tia Dalmas swamp AND the arid land of the Ille Crucis where he keeps the chest ... but then in this conversation we lit on the land atthe sea bottom ... woith the water element crushing down on it, and Bootstrap tied to it by a piece of "remorseless metal" of warring design, the canon ... even the name Bootstrap giving rise to an interpretation of being tied down, crushed ... wounded.
Guys, I enjoy your writing. I am not going to be able to actually read HP until my kids start on it.
It would be nice to hear about what you are studying in school.
CM,
Thanks. I like the Richard Harris pic from Count of Monte Cristo.
I hope we haven't spoiled anything in the plotline too much for you ... but the books are an enjoyable read everytime no matter how many time you read them ... book 4 is particularly noticably better/richer story than movie 4. wheras movies 1 and 2 were closed to the books ... and I had seen both of the first two movies before reading the books and it was still reading the books that made me fall in love with the series - before that I had been like "well, I was trying to dislike Harry Potter for the sake of being a Tolkien purist, but the movies seem half interesting and my friend's kid and wife are really into them, so I guess I'll check them out ... I think the thing that first got me really into them was something I wrote on in the post on Ginny in Chamber of Secrets that I put the url of up in this current post ... in the COS movie you have just the face of SLytherin with the Basilisk coming out of the mouth, but in the book you have a staue of the whole body of Slytherin with Ginny between laid between the feet ... very Molech type imagery).
Oh yeah, fogot I was going to give a rundown of what I'm studying here:
-One course is simply German for Reading, the second semester (next spring) final of which will count as passing reading proficiency testing.
-History of Christianity 1 (up through 1500) is an MA level course that is part of the foundations core for the MA degree here and which I am taking to beef out thin areas in my MA.
-Intro to New Testament is another MA foundations core to "sure up what remains" - heavy emphasis on Paul in the first part of the course, from the perspective of Jewish Apocalyptic literature being a major tenet in Paul (hence, spent all of last class on 4 Ezdras and Qumran dead sea scrolls [including the only extant Pre-Pauline occurence of the Hebrew term which becomes Paul's "works of the law")
-Hebrew Prose is the only PhD level course I have this semester - pretty much a straight reading course, but pretty intensive since it is usually 10-20 verses of text analyzed from a literary, and sometimes critical, standpoint.