The LION & the CARDINAL

RAYMOND LLULL, DOCTOR ILLUMINATUS

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 20:01:36 -0600

Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Catalan mystic and poet whose writings helped to develop the Romance Catalan language and widely influenced Neo-Platonic mysticism throughout mediaeval and 17th century Europe. He is best known in the history of ideas as the inventor or an art of finding truth that was primarily intended to support the Roman Catholic faith in missionary work but was also designed to unify all branches of knowledge...

Llull at the age of 30 experienced mystical visions of Christ on the Cross, after which he abandoned courtly life and devoted himself to missionary work. Influenced by the pacifist spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi, he traveled throughout North Africa and Asia Minor attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity.

About 1272, after another mystical experience on Majorca's Mount Randa in which Llull related seeing the whole universe reflecting the divine attributes, he conceived of reducing all knowledge to first principles and determining their convergent point of unity. Borrowing certain tenets from the 11th century Scholastic theologian Anselm of Canterbury, he wrote his principal work; this is collectively known as the Ars magna and includes the treatises Arbor scientiae and Liber de ascensu et descensu intellectus. Llull attempted to place Christian apologetics on the level of rational discussion, mainly to meet the needs of disputation with the Muslims. Llull used logic and complex mechanical techniques involving symbolic notation and combinatory diagrams to relate all forms of knowledge, including theology, philosophy and the natural sciences as analogues of one another and as manifestations of the Godhead in the universe. Llull thus used original logical methods in an attempt to prove the dogmas of Christian theology. The Ars Magna's apologetic applications receded into the background after Llull's death, and it was as a universal system and compendium of knowledge that the Ars remained influential...

Llull devoted his life to the spread of his Ars and attempted to interest rulers and popes in his projects. King James II of Aragon was persuaded to establish a school at Majorca for the study of Oriental languages so that the Ars could be disseminated throughout the Islamic world...

Llull was stoned in North Africa at Bejaïa or Tunis and died a martyr at sea before reaching Majorca, where he was buried. Charges of confusing faith with reason led to the condemnation of Llull's teaching by Pope Gregory XI in 1376. In the 19th century, however, the Roman Catholic Church showed more sympathetic interest and approved of his veneration. Current interest centres on his mystical writings, particularly The Book of the Lover and the Beloved. In Catalan culture his allegorical novels Blanquerna and Felix enjoy wide popularity.

Llull's Ars Magna was read with interest by Gottfried Leibniz, and inspired his Calculus Ratiocinator. Certain computer scientists now recognize in Llull's system the beginnings of their own discipline.

The Llullian Arts website hosts a wealth of information about this great mystic, writer, apostle, philosopher and martyr, including a series of twelve miniatures from an illuminated vita. Click on each of the images below to see it larger at the source, and to read the transcribed or translated text using a clever mouseover function:

Selected pages from a 1501 printed edition of the Ars Magna:

VERSES OF ST. BERNARD

Sun, 7 Jun 2009 19:59:53 -0600

Christopher de Hamel:

One also finds [in a Book of Hours] eccentric little texts like the verses of St. Bernard, sometimes preceded by an anecdote explaining their origin. One day (the rubrics in the Book of Hours tell us) the Devil appeared to St. Bernard and boasted that he knew of seven [or eight] special verses in the Psalms so efficacious that whoever recited them daily could not die in sin. St. Bernard cried, What are they? Tell me at once! I shan't, said the Devil, You shall not know them. St. Bernard then replied that he would have to recite the entire Psalter every day in order to be sure of including the seven magic verses, and the Devil, fearing that this excessive devotion would do too much good, quickly revealed the verses.

[A History of Illuminated Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel. Phaidon: London, 1994]

The verses are:

Illumina oculos meos ... adversus eum. [Ps. 12:4-5]

In manus tuas Domine ... Deus veritatis. [Ps. 30:6]

Locutus sum in lingua mea ... finem meum. [Ps. 38:5]

Et numerum dierum meorum ... desit mihi. [Ps. 38:5]

Disrupisti Domine Vincula mea ... invocabo. [Ps. 115:16-17]

Periit fuga a me ... animam meam. [Ps. 141:5]

Clamavi ad te Domine ... terra vivencium. [Ps. 141:6]

Fac mecum signum ... consolatus es me. [Ps. 85:17]

NEW DRAWING

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 23:01:00 -0600

A new butterfly drawing. A detail:

More biological artwork.

PARIS PSALTER

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 09:24:21 -0600

Illustrations from the Paris Psalter, a rare surviving example of pure Hellenistic iconography.

HAGIOGRAPHY and the BENEFIT of DOUBT

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 08:42:02 -0600

Emile Mâle:

It was no new departure when at the end of the thirteenth century Jacobus de Voragine wrote the famous Golden Legend, for in it he simply popularised the lectionary, preserving even its sequence. His compilation is in no sense original. He is content with completing the stories by recourse to the originals, and with adding new legends here and there. The Golden Legend became famous throughout Christendom, because it put into the hands of all men stories which until then had hardly been found outside the liturgical books. The baron in his castle, the merchant in his shop could now enjoy the beautiful tales at will.

The attack made on Jacobus de Voragine by scholars of the seventeenth century misses its mark. The Golden Legend, which they accused of being a legend of lead, was not the work of a man but of the whole of Christendom. The candour and the credulity of the writer belonged to his time. The stories of St. Thomas's voyage to India or of St. James's miraculous cloak, recounted so naïvely in the Golden Legend, though displeasing to the strict theologians trained in the school of the fathers of the Council of Trent, were universally accepted in the thirteenth century. They were read in public in the churches, and they were illustrated in the windows. To condemn Jacobus de Voragine is to condemn all the ancient lectionaries, and with them the clergy who read them and the faithful who listened.

The detractors of the hagiographical tradition to which Golden Legend witnesses are legion - beginning with humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus and Lorenzo Valla, and including such churchmen as the Counter-Reformatonal iconoclast John Molanus, John of Launoy (the infamous denicheur), Adrien Baillet, and countless others whose skepticism triumphed in the great stripping of the calendars in 1969, on the intstructions of Sacrosanctum Consilium to purge the liturgy of anything that smacks of mythology.

I will always be a defender of the Golden Legend and the traditional hagiographies - and more than a defender of them, a believer in them. That is to say, I believe that they are holy, deserving of preservation, and usually true. For this, I have been called many things - stupid, romantic, reactionary. I have, in the past, justified myself by arguing that hagiography ought to be read in the same spirit that Holy Scripture is read - with literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical significance. I have mostly abandoned this argument - not because I think it false, but because I think it unnecessary.

Believing in the veracity of the Golden Legend does not require a suspension of disbelief, not a Sigerist double standard of truth (one truth for reason, one truth for faith), nor even a healthy hermeneutic. All that is required is the benefit of doubt. That is to say, most of the stories recounted by the traditional hagiographies give us no reason, in themselves, to disbelieve them.

A qualification must be made here. The hagiographies are not infallible and I certainly make no claim to the contrary. (To be honest, I harbor doubts that even the most rigorous process of canonization is infallible.) They were compiled by human authors without divine inspiration. Some contain errors. On occasion, we find confused identities, or details disproved by substantial historical evidence. On occasion, we find contradictory versions of the same story, as with multiple claimants to the same relic. In such cases, someone must be wrong. Even more rarely, we find cults of devotion whose origins can be traced, with reasonable certitude, to heretical or pagan sources or to political agenda or to blood libels or to misunderstandings or to pure fancy.

But these are the exceptions, not the rule. In the current religious consciousness, wherein the traditional hagiographies are treated mostly as sources for curious stories or nerdy jokes, the exceptions are more likely to be remembered. But they are rarities among the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of saints whose cults have been ignominiously quashed, or whose hagiographies have been edited in the name of historical criticism.

The traditional accounts of the lives of these saints only become incredible when they are read with a prejudice against the miraculous. And most of the proofs offered by scholars debunking the hagiographies and explaining what really happened are as baseless and arbitrary as the stories themselves are accused of being.

For example, according to the Golden Legend:

The body of St. Denis raised himself up, and bare his head between his arms, as the angel led him two leagues from the place, which is said the hill of the martyrs, unto the place where he now resteth, by his election, and by the purveyance of God.

Modern hagiographies are unanimous in rejecting the story of St. Denis carrying his own head for two leagues. Nowadays, everybody knows this didn't really happen - what really happened is that two rival churches claimed the honor of being the place of the saint's martyrdom and death, and the story was invented as a compromise. Or, what really happened is that ignorant mediaeval peasants misunderstood the artistic convention of depicting a decapitated martyr holding his own head and invented a story to match.

But there is no evidence whatsoever that the story is not true as recounted above. There is no evidence whatsoever that it was invented to pacify rival holy sites, or to explain the misinterpretations of cathedral statuary. All of this is is pure conjecture. The only reason that a man would accept the new explanations is that he gives the benefit of the doubt to the skeptic over the tradition; that he believes that a saint carrying his head two leagues is something that cannot - therefore did not - happen.

And the most popular explanation - that of ignorant mediaeval peasants misinterpreting art - is completely implausible. It betrays a misunderstanding of the way hagiography, iconography and devotion related in the middle ages. (As a general rule, any explanation for anything that hinges on the idiocy of mediaeval people is a product of historical bigotry and little more.)

This explanation assumes that mediaeval hagiographies were essentially the product of folk religion, generated by the ignorant peasantry and only later accepted by the official church - something akin to the folk devotions of contemporary Latin America. While it is certainly true that mediaeval hagiography and contemporary folk hagiography resemble each other more closely than either resembles historical critical hagiography, there is an important difference between them. In the middle ages, the theologically learned participated in the cults of devotion, and usually initiated them. How many of the saints in the Golden Legend were monks or nuns, whose veneration began in the very monasteries where they lived and died. The authors of their vitae were the most educated men of the day, including popes and bishops and abbots.

Jacobus of Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, was not a folklorist wandering the fields and writing down the fantastic bedtime stories of the unlettered. He merely collected, compared and expanded what was already written in the various liturgical martyrologies, what was read at Matins across Christendom. The story of St. Denis the Cephalophore was known and believed and chanted by the very clergy who commissioned the cathedral sculptures. It was known and believed and chanted by St. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastic theologians disputing at the University of Paris. They certainly had no reason to doubt it.

For there is no evidence that St. Denis did not carry his head, or that St. Barbara was not imprisoned in a tower, or that St. Catherine did not destroy the wheel of her torture, or that St. Medard was not sheltered from the rain by an eagle, or that St. Cuthbert was not reverenced by otters after a night of penance in the cold sea. There is no evidence that St. Eustace did not witness the apparition of the Crucified Christ between the antlers of a stag, or that St. Hubert did not witness the same, or that the two men are really one (for who says that God cannot work a similar miracle twice?). There is no evidence that a giant of monstrous appearance did not ferry the Christ Child across the river, or that St. Genevieve's candle was not snuffed by a demon - for giants and demons are real, and still exist today.

As for the the story of St. George and the dragon - we know that reptilian monsters once roamed the earth in great numbers; we know that books can be filled with lists of the so-called Lazarus taxa; we know that fishermen pull coelacanths out of African rivers, and that Laotian rock rats are sold at meat market; we know that creatures as large and as common as the giant squid are able to evade the eyes of modern man and all his gizmos; we know that creatures as large and as fantastic as the half-ton elephant bird lived and died even after the Council of Trent. Why is it implausible that large reptiles (likely now extinct, but perhaps not) fulfilling the descriptions of the hagiographies lurked in the wildernesses in the days of St. George (or St. Margaret or St. Sylvester or St. Benedict)? Or, barring this, that the ancient enemy was (and is) able to conjure them from time to time?

And even more importantly - we know that holy scripture, the inerrant Word of God, speaks of dragons and basilisks, of frogs falling from the sky and rivers turning to blood. The miracles of Elijah are no less fantastic than the miracles of St. Nicholas. Balaam's ass is no less fantastic than St. Rumwold. The Old Testament - and the New - are no less fantastic at face than the Golden Legend. They smack no less of mythology to the modern mind.

Here of course, some will object that scripture is inerrant, and that hagiography is not; the vitae of the saints form a tradition extrinsic to divine revelation - a little t tradition. And yes, this is true - but I think that the obsession in popular catechesis and apologetics over distinguishing big T and little t traditions is a good example of the old demonic ploy of making men fear exactly the wrong error at exactly the wrong time. The world is not overrun with men who think that such traditions must be believed de fide. It is overrrun with men who think that they need not be believed at all; minimalism is the heresy of the hour. Hagiographic, iconographic, monastic and liturgical traditions - these are holy and Christ-bearing things, and a Christian who dismisses them, insults them, ignores them, changes them at whim, or rejects them entirely does so at his peril.

But this really is beside the point. The debate over the worth of the traditional hagiography should not be reduced to an argument over different categories of authority. For the Bible is not just a book of stories whose veracity we are not permitted to question; it is a record of God's action among men and as man, a record of events that really occurred - and it speaks of marvels. We either live in a world in which these sort of things happen, or we do not.

If we believe that we live in such a world, the hagiographies no longer appear ridiculous. If we do not, the Resurrection itself appears ridiculous. The idea that we can save the reputation of the Church by conceding every allowable criticism to the skeptics, and that this will prevent them from crossing the uncrossable line of doubting Revelation itself - is like the idea that a man is less likely to fall off a cliff if he dance as close as possible to its precipice, rather than build his home and live his life miles away.

So let us give the Golden Legend and the old hagiographies the benefit of the doubt. They deserve at least that much.

SECOND COUNCIL of NICAEA

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 09:25:17 -0600

From the Dogmatic Decree of the Second Œcumenical Council of Nicæa:

We keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally, one of which is the making of pictorial representations, agreeable to the history of the preaching of the Gospel, a tradition useful in many respects, but especially in this, that so the incarnation of the Word of God is shown forth as real and not merely fantastic, for these have mutual indications and without doubt have also mutual significations.

We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Ghost indwells her), define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honorable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honorable reverence, not indeed that true worship of faith which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honor which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. For thus the teaching of our holy Fathers, that is the tradition of the Catholic Church, which from one end of the earth to the other has received the Gospel, is strengthened. Thus we follow Paul, who spoke in Christ, and the whole divine Apostolic company and the holy Fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. So we sing prophetically the triumphal hymns of the Church: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Rejoice and be glad with all your heart. The Lord has taken away from you the oppression of your adversaries; you are redeemed from the hand of your enemies. The Lord is a King in the midst of you; you shall not see evil any more, and peace be unto you forever.

Those, therefore who dare to think or teach otherwise, or as wicked heretics to spurn the traditions of the Church and to invent some novelty, or else to reject some of those things which the Church has received (the Book of the Gospels, or the image of the cross, or the pictorial icons, or the holy relics of a martyr), or evilly and sharply to devise anything subversive of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church or to turn to common uses the sacred vessels or the venerable monasteries, if they be bishops or clerics, we command that they be deposed; if religious or laics, that they be excommunicated.

So we all believe, we all are so minded, we all give our consent and have signed. This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the Orthodox, this is the faith which has made firm the whole world. Believing in one God, to be celebrated in Trinity, we salute the honorable images! Those who do not so hold, let them be anathema. Those who do not thus think, let them be driven far away from the Church. For we follow the most ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We keep the laws of the Fathers. We anathematize those who add anything to or take anything away from the Catholic Church. We anathematize the introduced novelty of the revilers of Christians. We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not. Anathema to those who presume to apply to the venerable images the things said in Holy Scripture about idols. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to gods. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the Catholic Church received idols.

SS. PETER and PAUL

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:01:00 -0600

CATHEDRAL of ST. PATRICK in LEAD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:39:43 -0600

These picture-postcards show the cathedral church of the defunct Diocese of Lead. Most Rev. Joseph Perry, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, is currently the tituar bishop of the diocese.

CAPTURE of the UNICORN

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:51:48 -0600

Edward Payson Evans:

The unicorn is another favourite type, and is thus described by the Physiologus:

It is a small animal, but exceeding strong and fleet, with a single horn in the centre of its forehead. The only means of capturing it is by stratagem, namely, by decking a chaste virgin with beautiful ornaments and seating her in a solitary place in the forest frequented by the unicorn, which no sooner perceives her than it runs to her and, laying its head gently in her lap, falls asleep. Then the hunters come and take it captive to the king's palace and receive for it much treasure.

Herein the unicorn resembles our Saviour, who hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David; and the work of redemption, which neither thrones, nor dominations, nor heavenly powers could accomplish, He brought to pass. The mighty ones of this world were unable to approach Him or to lay hold of Him, until He abode in the womb of the Virgin Mary. As it is written: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; or as this passage is paraphrased in le Bestiaire Divin:

Sul por la volontéde Dieu,
Passa Deu por la Virgne mère;
Et la Parole fut char faite,
Que virginetén’i of fraite.

In the border of the central lancet window in the apsis of the cathedral at Lyons is a representation of this fable of the unicorn and the Virgin as a symbol of Christ’s incarnation. It is rather awkwardly drawn, and the Virgin seems to sit astride of the unicorn’s neck, but it was evidently the intention of the artist to have the animal’s head lying in her lap. There is a carving of the same kind in St. Botolph’s Church at Boston, Lincolnshire, and a series of reliefs of a similar character may be seen in the cathedral at Toledo, in Spain.

A curious German engraving of the fifteenth century, entitled Von der menschwerdong gottes nach geistlicher auszlegong der hystori von dem einhoren, pictures the Annunciation and Incarnation as the chase of the unicorn. The archangel Gabriel, the leader of the hunt, winds his horn, from which is supposed to proceed the melodious greeting: Hail, highly-favoured one, the Lord is with thee, thou blessed among women! The unicorn, pursued by hounds, is running rapidly towards the Virgin, who sits with upturned eyes and hands folded across her breast in a state of ecstasy, while the horn of the animal is in perilous proximity to her lap. On her right are an altar with burning candles and a flowing fountain, a symbol of the waters of eternal life. In the background God the Father holds a globe surmounted with a cross in one hand, and gives His benediction with the other. The three dogs are Mercy, Truth, and Justice, and denote the attributes of the Saviour and the feelings which impelled Him to become incarnate, and to redeem the world from the dominion of Satan.

This symbolism is more fully and clearly expressed in a German painting of the fifteenth or perhaps the beginning of the sixteenth century, now belonging to the Grand Ducal Library of Weimar. In this extremely elaborate and highly-finished work of art there are four dogs held in leash and barking at the unicorn, which is already in the lap of the Virgin; their collars are labelled respectively Veritas, Justitia, Misericordia, and Pax; the first two are dark-brown, the third light-brown, and the fourth white. The Virgin wears a greenish-brown dress studded with golden flowers, and a green mantle. Gabriel is arrayed in scarlet, and has wings of many brilliant hues. Gideon kneels behind her on his fleece of wool (Judges, vi 36-40). In the background is a city representing Zion. To the right of the Virgin in the sky appears God the Father, with a large wreath of oak-leaves encircling His neck and resting on His shoulders, His hands upraised in the act of blessing, and the Christ-child descending on a beam of light and bearing a cross. At the lower end of the beam of light is a dove hovering over the Virgin’s head and its beak directed towards her ear.

This attitude of the dove, which is quite common, and indeed almost universal, in medi¿val and early modern pictures of the Annunciation, is intended to indicate the naïve notion entertained by patristic writers and later theologians, that the conception of Christ was effected supernaturally through the Virgin’s ear, so that she remained perfectly pure and immaculate, and her maidenhood intact... As God spoke the world into existence, so the voice of the Most High uttering salutation through the mouth of the angel caused the Virgin to conceive, and the Word was made flesh. But as spoken words are addressed to the ear, and through this organ find lodgment in the mind and thus bear fruit, it was assumed that the incarnation of the Logos was accomplished in the same manner. Deus per angelum loquebatur et Virgo per aurem impregnabatur, says St. Augustine (Sermo de Tempore, xxii); and this view, which was generally accepted by the Apostolic Fathers, is expressed eight centuries later in a verse attributed to Thomas à Becket:

Gaude Virgo, mater Christi,
Quæ per aurem concepisti.

The same description of the miraculous event is given by the German mediæval poet, Walther von der Vogelweide: Dur ir ore enphinc si den vil suezen. In the parish church (formerly belonging to the abbey) of Eltenberg on the Rhine, is an Annunciation moulded in clay, baked and painted, in which the infant Jesus, attended by the Holy Spirit, descends from heaven on the breath of God the Father, and enters the ear of the Virgin. Similar representations are to be seen (so far as they have not been destroyed) at Oppenheim, on the portal of the cathedral at Würzburg, and elsewhere.

The blast of Gabriel’s bugle in the Weimar painting is no uncertain sound, but becomes articulate as Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum, to which the Virgin responds: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum. Indeed the air is full of floating legends taken chiefly from the Song of Solomon, such as Sicut lilium inter spinas, sic amica mea inter filias (As the lily among thorns, so my love among the daughters); Fons hortorum, puteus aquarum viventium quae fluunt impetu de Libano (A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon);Veni Auster, perfla hortum et fluant aromata (Come, thou south, blow upon my garden that the spices may flow out); Turris eburnea (Tower of ivory), &c. The Virgin sits behind a wicker fence or palisade in illustration of the passage: A garden enclosed is my sister.

Engravings of this painting have been frequently published... There is another picture of a similar character at Weimar; a third was formerly in the Hospital Church at Grimmenthal on the Werra; and a fourth is in the cathedral at Brunswick, painted on one of the folding compartments of a triptych or altar-piece.

The Virgin with the unicorn in her lap is on the outside, and the angel as huntsman with horn, spear, and dogs on the inside. Out of the mouth of the animal proceed the words : Quia quem Cœli capere non possunt, in tuo gremio contulisti, a punning form of expression, which may refer either to the incarnation of Christ, or to the hunting of the unicorn: Whom the heavens (highest powers) could not contain (capture), thou didst hold (take) in thy womb (lap). The Virgin has a blue robe, the lower part of which is reddish; a basket of manna is at her feet, and near her the legend: fons signatus (a fountain sealed). The angel is dressed in white with a red mantle floating in the wind, and has four dogs in the leash. In the Grimmenthal picture the symbolism is still more striking. On the left of the tall and majestic angel is a lion howling over two motionless whelps, with the legend Maria leo, and just before him the eternal city or perennity of God (perennitas Dei); above the gate of heaven (porta cœli) God the Father appears in the clouds between the sun and the moon; across the disc of the former are the words clara ut sol (clear as the sun), and issuing from the mouth of the human face defined in the crescent of the latter the words, pulchra ut luna (fair as the moon). On the left of the painting is a star (stella maris), and on the right a pelican feeding its young with its blood, and Moses talking with Jehovah in the burning bush. In the centre is Gideon kneeling on his fleece; behind him is the flowing fountain of the waters of eternal life; above it a mirror with the inscription, speculum sine macula (a mirror without spot).

[Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture by E.P. Evans. 1896]

This iconographic type of the Capture of the Unicorn as an allegory of the Incarnation, although reviled by the pusillanimous post-Tridentine art censors, retains both its charm and its profundity today. The finest example I have seen (not in person) is on a woven altar frontal in the Swiss National Museum. Some others:

In the Cathedral of Lübeck

In a 15th century Dutch Book of Hours

In a late mediaeval painting at Maria Gail

By the Spanish Forger, early 20th century

My own interpretation

JUST JUDGES of the GHENT ALTARPIECE

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:35:47 -0600

The image above is the bottom left panel in Jan van Eyck's famed Ghent Altarpiece. It was not painted by Jan van Eyck, but by early 20th century Belgian art copyist Jef Vanderveken. The original panel was stolen from the Cathedral of St. Bavo on the night of 10 April 1934, and never recovered.

A good article on the theft and the various attempts to solve the case.