Different Image of Mary

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Tis_Bearself said:
Yes, well, there is always someone who takes it a bit too far 🙂
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Haha. Very true. Still, imagine me a young innocent bright-eyed girl in an early church history class. The unit on medieval women mystics was… ahem… enlightening. 😟

I know they didn’t mean what we modern folk think they meant, but goodness!
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
I know they didn’t mean what we modern folk think they meant, but goodness!
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Oh, I think they meant exactly what has been meant throughout the ages. The medieval women were quite obsessive about it. Have you read Caroline Walker Bynum’s works on this? She writes about this particular topic as well the obsession with food/fasting. Many of our saints were anorexic.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
The medieval women were quite obsessive about it. Have you read Caroline Walker Bynum’s works on this?
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Yes, they were, and yes, I have in part.

I don’t know, I still think that there was a lot more symbolism there than… Largely, I think they were trying to convey the depth of their experiences and relationship with Christ using the strongest and most intimate language possible. There are many layers of context, symbolism, and rhetoric to be unpacked there. Some of these women were simply brilliant.
 
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The whole “brides of Christ” thing that professed religious women embrace has no parallel with Mary.
Professed male religious do not become “bridegrooms of Mary”, nor could they possibly think of her in any way other than strictly virginal.
 
I was surprised by the armor and thought it might be a depiction off Joan of Arc but you like to the met museum explained it,
 
WileyC1949 said:
I was surprised by the armor and thought it might be a depiction off Joan of Arc but you like to the met museum explained it,
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Joan of Arc was considerably after the 9th century but I can see it on first sight, yes.

But taking it back to the 800’s, I think that Carolingian Christianity was quite unique, as was the art that emerged from it. I am not well versed in that time period, but I am not surprised that the Mary we’re discussing appears as she does. I would say, also, that she might well have come from England during that time period, or perhaps earlier (600’s?) just before the Synod of Whitby. Their Christianity was even further removed from Papal Christianity than the Carolingians. And both were quite the warriors. I can see our Mary in both time periods and in both places.
 
Mark121359 said:
I’ll stick with the image […] St Faustina’s description portrayed in the Vilnius Divine Mercy Image. (below)
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As you wish. But a long-haired Jesus is a latter-day invention. There’s no reason to believe Jesus would have worn his hair long.

In any case, in my opinion neither Jesus nor Mary nor any of the saints should ever have been depicted naturalistically. The Orthodox have done wise by allowing only the icon style.
 
I don’t know if the concept of the Church Militant goes back to the 9th century, but that is what this image of Mary makes me think of. The Church Militant personified as Mary = awesome.
It looks to me like the image is showing her as seated on something – like a queen would be. Even better: The Church Militant personified as Mary, Queen of Heaven = Even more awesome.
 
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This is my idea of how the Savior looked like. Tough, strong, and a normal average guy.
 
Doesn’t the Shroud of Turin have long hair?
 
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Well one of her titles is Exterminatrix of all Heresies so I suppose this could fit rather well
 
SeriousQuestion said:
Doesn’t the Shroud of Turin have long hair?
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Seems so. But what of it? The Shroud of Turin’s authenticity will never be proved or disproved. One can argue endlessly for or against, but the thing is just too old to ever know for sure. And even we could prove that it really was Jesus’ (pbuh) original burial cloth, that still wouldn’t prove that the image on the cloth is a good likeness, or a likeness at all. Whoever wants to believe that it’s real is free to do so, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.
 
Thanks for your opening post, and also for that image of Jesus (pbuh) that according to you as was constructed by some British scientists. I find both extremely interesting. To me the image of Mary confirms what I’ve suspected for a long time, i.e. that Mary was conceived of very differently in the Middle Ages.

And about the image of Jesus, well, the strange thing is that I find it a very compelling picture. I don’t know why, and I’m not going to try and find out how those British scientists decided that he probably looked something like this, but to me it intuitively seems “right”, unlike the typical “peaceful” Jesus with the calm stare, which to me seems hippiesque, almost glib. The Jesus in your picture looks sincere but disconcerted, which makes much more sense to me.
 
Roguish said:
As you wish. But a long-haired Jesus is a latter-day invention. There’s no reason to believe Jesus would have worn his hair long.
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How do you know??? That’s nothing more than your opinion! This article says that the tradition of shoulder length hair depicted on Jesus, such as on the Shroud of Turin, does not contradict the Bible.
Part of the problem in discussing hair length is how long is long? We know from archeological materials such as Middle Eastern carvings and Egyptian tomb paintings that Jews wore what we would consider today as long hair and beards. Hair reached down to the shoulders on men. Women wore hair down to the waist.
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https://www.catholic.com/index.php/...hy-do-our-portraits-of-jesus-show-him-with-it
 
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