Semiotics of the Christian Imagination

Signs of the Fall and Redemption

Domenico Pietropaolo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350196926
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350064140
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

The semiotics of the Christian imagination describes the repository of signs and the logic of signification through which a community of faith envisions spiritual truths. This book analyses various examples in text, images, music, art and scientific treatise of the imaginative semiotisation of the fall of Man and the Church's semiotic perception of the Divine plan for Redemption.

The book includes a chapter detailing the theory of signs, based on a close reading of primary sources, and has nine further chapters on the meaning-making inherent in ideas of the Fall and Redemption of mankind. These are filtered through and given material representation by the semiotic paradigms of various cultural fields, including philology, verbal arts and science.

Central to this practice - and to the book's message - are two themes of theological semiotics fundamental to man's understanding of himself in the larger scheme of things. Two of these include the theology of the Fall and a sacramental theory of signs. The theory is grounded in the doctrine of analogy, and this is the only reliable cognitive link between the immanence of the thinking subject and the transcendence that is the object of thought.

1

The centrality of signs in the Christian imagination

Signa dantur hominibus, quorum est per nota ad ignota pervenire.¹

In recent years the relationship between theology and the liberal arts has given rise to a view of biblical exegesis that, in addition to conventional commentaries, includes sculpture, art, music, drama, literature and science as semiotic paradigms for explicating fundamental passages of Scripture and for illustrating related principles of doctrine and faith.² The present book is a study of how the culture of the early modern period, with its profound interest in the idea of imaginative representations, lent itself to such an expanded view of biblical reading and to an ongoing transformative dialogue with theology, in a period marked by a severe crisis of faith. Central to this concern of early modern culture was the development of a semiotics of the imagination, by means of which to understand in a concrete manner, and to give material expression to, abstract principles of official doctrine pertaining to the ideas of the fall and redemption of mankind. The concept of sign behind this development was generally grounded in the doctrine of analogy, viewed as the only reliable cognitive link between the immanence of the thinking subject as a fallen creature and the transcendence of salvation through redemption.

This introductory chapter is an outline of the semiotic apparatus through which the Christian imagination of the early modern period related the world of immanence to the world of transcendence, with special reference to the fall and redemption of mankind. It argues that, with respect to these themes, the concepts of sign and signification, considered both as instruments of cognition and as means of expression, occupy a central role in the Christian imagination from the later Middle Ages to the turn of the seventeenth century. Among the many possible examples that can be adduced from the contemporary reflection on signs, we will focus on three, which, on account of the authority that their authors enjoyed, are a good indication of the church’s institutional views and clear testimony of the semiotic orientation of its culture. They include a recapitulative statement on the nature of signs by the late medieval pope Lothario Conti, who reigned as Innocent III, various pronouncements on biblical signs by an authoritative theologian of the Renaissance, Cardinal Tommaso de Vio, originally from Cajeta (modern Gaeta) and hence commonly known as Cajetan, and the discussion of sacred signs in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, authored by a committee appointed by Pius V.³ These sources have hitherto received no attention in standard accounts of the history of semiotics, though they are without doubt representative of mainstream thought on the subject in this period of history. Throughout the Middle Ages, signs were theorized in the context of the theology of the sacraments, understood as rituals that both signify and give real presence to divine grace, though not all theologians agreed on the relative importance of the signifying and efficacious functions of the words and gestures of the rituals. In their own theorization of signs and of the dynamics of signification, Innocent III, Cajetan and the authors of the Roman Catechism brought together various medieval sources and built upon their union with considerable sophistication.

Innocent III

‘Only in God does the life of the intellect make no use of signs,’ remarked Jacques Maritain in an essay on the nature of signs and symbols. Steeped as Maritain’s philosophical perspective was in the culture of Scholasticism, this statement calls attention to the pervasive presence of signs in the culture of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.⁴ God creates and knows, simultaneously and immediately, and does not need signs to do either; human beings, on the other hand, know that creation proclaims the work of God (Ps. 19.1) and must interpret the signs of that proclamation in order to come into cognitive contact with God. Maritain’s view is particularly relevant to the field of sacramental theology, since the concept of sacrament, in St Augustine’s classical definition of it, is totally grounded in the idea of sign, and sacraments are needed only by fallen creatures seeking salvation, which is why God instituted them for the benefit of humanity. St Augustine’s clear understanding of signs on this front remains a focal point of theological reflection in the period contemplated in the present study. Though it was elaborated by Augustine in the context of sacramental theology, the theory of signs enters easily into other areas of intellectual and spiritual life that need to confront the notion of symbolic representation. Only God has no need of signs in the life of His own intellect, but the analysis of all forms of communication and representation, including communication addressed by God to man and vice versa, would be next to vacuous without the notion of signs. The legacy of much of the medieval reflection on the nature of signs is neatly summed up by Innocent III in the brief chapter on De distinctione signorum (On the Distinction of signs) of his treatise De Sacro Altaris Mysterio,⁵ written in 1198 and first issued in print in 1534:

Signorum autem alia sunt naturalia, et alia positiva. Naturalia sunt, quae secundum naturam significant. Quorum quaedam sunt quae per antecedens significat subsequens, ut rubore vespertino significatur serenitas matutina. Alia sunt quae per consequens significant antecedens ut fumo vel cinere significatur ignis. Positiva sunt quae secundum impositionem significant, quorum alia sunt signum rei sacrae, ut serpens aeneus erectus in eremo (Num. XXI) . . . Alia sunt rei non sacrae, ut arcus triumphalis erectus in bivio. Signorum rei sacrae, alia sunt sacra, ut baptismus; alia non sacra, ut agnus paschalis. Sacra sunt signa Novi Testamenti, non sacra Veteris.⁶

(Some signs are natural and others are positive. Natural signs are those that signify in accordance with nature. Among these are signs that signify a consequent by its antecedent, as when fair weather in the morning is signified by red sky the previous evening, and signs that signify the antecedent by means of its consequent, as when fire is signified by smoke or ashes. Positive signs signify by imposed meaning, and among these we find signs of sacred things, such as the brazen serpent erect in the desert (Num. 21). Other signs, such as a triumphal arch erected at a crossroads, signify things that are not sacred. Some signs of sacred things, such as baptism, are themselves sacred. Others, such as the paschal lamb, are not sacred. Sacred signs are found in the New Testament; non-sacred signs are in the Old Testament.)

Innocent III begins his reflection on the nature of signs by reminding the reader of the distinctive feature of medieval semiotics as outlined by St Augustine, namely that the term signum covers both natural and artificial signs, a distinction that assigns to the same category of being signs that occur in nature, or the world created by God, and signs that occur in culture, which is the product of man’s creation. This inclusive conception of the sign, which is strikingly different from the one inherited from classical discussions of σημεϊον in antiquity, remained foundational in the Renaissance and beyond, though not without controversy.⁷ Innocent refines the category of signum by using the conceptual framework of jurisprudence to distinguish natural from artificial signs. In analogy with positive and natural law, he separates natural from positive signs, from which we infer that, just as by adhering to natural law we participate in the moral order of the cosmos, by reading natural signs we participate in the network of signifying relations that underlies the whole of reality. Innocent III interprets natural signs by means of a principle of logic that regards the structure of reasoning as a relationship between an antecedent and a subsequent. Antecedence may indicate a form of material causation (fire causes smoke and ashes), in which case the signifying process is necessarily true, or else it may imply simple temporal precedence without causal determination (the redness of the sky in the evening and fair weather the morning after), and in that case signification may or may not be true. By contrast, positive signs are artificial: they are not found in nature as signs, and they signify by imposed definition.

All signs of sacred things, whether they are themselves sacred or not, are positive. In analogy with a positive law, which has no natural reference to cosmic morality, a positive sign has no intrinsic element of signification, theological or otherwise. All meaning is the result of a defined valence imposed on the sign, in analogy with the practice of legem ponere of which the imposition of meaning reminds us etymologically. Precisely how such meaning is imposed, Innocent does not say, but it is clear that the meaning of signs is not merely a matter of mere convention or habitual practice. Signs are positive when their meaning is consciously assigned to them, secundum impositionem. An important implication of Innocent’s view is that meaning comes from a source of authority accepted as such by the community using the signs. The meaning of these signs is normative, binding the community of sign users, which is the church, to a clearly defined interpretation. Such signs exert a clear illocutionary force on their interpreters because they seek to shape their attitude of mind and to reorient their moral conduct, and that force is strong, coming as it does from an acknowledged source of superior authority. This analysis of the sign is preliminary to a discussion of the word ‘sacrament’, which, under specific circumstances, Innocent treats virtually as a synonym of sign. Underlying his approach is St Augustine’s definition of sacrament as a ‘sacrum signum’ (De Civ. Dei, 10.5). Innocent observes that the word ‘sacrament’ itself has a narrow and a general meaning. In the narrow sense, a sacrament is a sacred sign, whereas in the wider application of the term, a sacrament is simply a sign of a sacred thing. The difference between a sacred sign and the sign of a sacred thing is that only a sacred sign has the power to justify the person receiving it. Sacraments that justify are found only in the New Testament; the Old Testament includes many more sacraments (legalia sacramenta), but these were never endowed with justifying efficacy.

The reference to the presence of signs in the Old and New Testaments suggests the possibility of an exegesis from a semiotic perspective and argues, indirectly, that signs may be ubiquitous in the Christian imagination, which views reality through a prism of faith warranted by the Bible. Innocent also considers sacraments from the perspective of the semiotic agency involved in them, classifying them as either active or passive signs. A sacrament, he says, is to be understood quasi sacrum signans, vel sacrum signatum, depending on whether it signifies (signans) a sacred thing or is itself a signified (signatum) sacred thing or event. The concept of an active sacrament is well represented by the Eucharistic bread, which is a sacrament in so far as it signifies something sacred, while that of a passive sacrament is exemplified by the unity of the church, which is called a sacrament because it is a signified rather than a signifying entity. Only the body of Christ, Innocent adds, is a sacrament in both senses, a sacred signifier and the sacredness that it signifies.

In making these observations, Innocent III introduces a conspicuous social element into the picture by indicating that the fundamental concepts of his summary enjoy currency in the Christian community. He does this by formulating salient aspects of sacred signs with direct reference to the expression of common views in contemporary sacramental culture: dixerunt (they said), dicitur (it is said), dicuntur (they are called), nuncupatur (they are called). Such echoes of shared beliefs and preoccupations are witness to the semiotic self-awareness of contemporary culture, of which the pontiff is the highest representative, indirectly citing only those views that he is willing to sanction with his authority.

Innocent’s strong declaration of the theological foundation of the sign, seen here in its dual structure of signifier and signified, is also a statement of its centrality in the culture of the centuries that followed it, in which, with the conceptual framework of signs, the theology of the sacrament continued to be taught, reaffirmed and debated. The culture of the Renaissance, on various fronts profoundly different from Innocent’s, resonates with echoes of the motifs and themes mentioned by Innocent – including Innocent’s own echoes of Augustine and the various motifs that he developed from those echoes. The printed edition of De Sacro Altaris Mysterio in 1534 and the presence of echoes of its theory of signs in William Durand’s Rationale divinorum officiorum (7.23-25), itself issued in print already in 1459 and frequently after that, are material markers of the continuity of Latin culture sub specie semioticae. From this perspective, as John Deely has argued, the Renaissance may be regarded as the silver years of the Latin age of understanding, an age in the history of thought that began with Augustine and ended at the turn of the seventeenth century.⁸

Cajetan on God’s mode of speaking

A key figure in the development of semiotic awareness in this period was the Dominican Cardinal Thomas de Vio, more commo nly known in English-language scholarship by his toponymic adjective Cajetan. Distinguished theologian, philosopher and exegete, Cajetan was a prolific scholar whose views exercised considerable influence in the Latin age, and, consequently, will play a considerable role in the present study. Here, however, it is sufficient to call attention to a couple of passages from his large oeuvre in order to show his contribution to the development of ‘semiotic consciousness’ (Deeley) in Renaissance theology.

In his commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Cajetan observes that God speaks to man vel intelligibiliter, vel imaginabiliter, vel sensibiliter, ⁹ through his intellect, his imagination and his senses, using, we may add, different kinds of signs.¹⁰ St Augustine had taken into consideration only signs that we perceive with our senses, but in the later Middle Ages a number of theologians, starting with St Thomas Aquinas, revised the Augustinian conception of the sign to include signs that are not perceivable sensibiliter. Such mental entities are images and ideas that may occur to us, not as the end points of our thinking but as signs that redirect our understanding towards something that is other than they are, functioning in a manner analogous to that of material signs except that they are not themselves sensible. In this revised concept of sign, images, recollections and ideas are signs that operate silently on the intellect and the imagination. The revision was not without debate and controversy. The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The centrality of signs in the Christian imagination
• 2 Gendering the serpent
• 3 Cajetan on the fall of Eve
• 4 Workers of evil
• 5 The fall from harmony
• 6 Passiontide drama
• 7 Signs of the Passion and signs of compassion
• 8 Imitatio Christi
• 9 Signum magnum
• 10 The starry saints
• Notes
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Index Locorum
• Copyright