David Clarke

Western painting from the time of the Renaissance until the arrival of modernism can be broadly characterized as being concerned with making the represented space and its occupants as immediately present to the spectator as possible, with dissolving the painted surface and opening up an illusion of a three- dimensional world as if it existed before the viewing eye. To achieve this abolition of spatial and temporal distance - to eliminate from awareness the gap between the moment of origin and that of reception - anything which draws attention to the body of the spectator, the space of viewing, and the time of viewing, must be removed. The spectator, that is, must be constructed as a disembodied eye able to apprehend the whole image as if instantaneously.

Awareness of the body of the artist and the time and space of making must similarly be erased for mimetic art to perform its conjuring trick of presentness - like the spectator, the painter must also be reduced to an eye, and the act of painting construed as if taking place outside duration. In terms of the actual practice of painting this means an emphasis on what Norman Bryson, elaborating a view of Western painting similar to (and influential on) the one I am outlining here talks of as `erasive` brushwork. [1] Such brushwork does not draw attention to the painted surface or offer the possibility of being read as a trace of the artist. It is brushwork attempting to serve only an iconic function, and desiring to avoid carrying any indexical baggage along with it. A trace of the movement of an artist's hand across the canvas is liable to bring awareness of the artist as an embodied being, of the process (the duration) of painting and of the space of the work's making (that is, the space in front of the canvas rather than the space `within` it).

My attempt to characterize several centuries of Western art as sharing this common mimetic orientation obviously requires a great deal of qualification before it can be matched against specific historical instances, and it is also necessary to admit the existence of a great number of exceptions to the dominant pattern. Nevertheless, I think I can indicate a vantage point from which this level of abstract generalization can be seen as a helpful characterization by pointing to the difference between Western mimetic art and Chinese literati painting and calligraphy. In both these latter art forms brushwork which is visible as brushwork is the norm, and an elaborate aesthetic context exists in which those indexical marks are the subject of interpretation. One can also find a deliberate exploitation of the index within Western art by turning to a consideration of the modern period. The foregrounded, visible brushwork of much modernist painting may be taken as a deliberate attempt to produce an undermining of the mimetic system, to expose the falsity of its claims to be able to make the world present. The function of the indexical here is that of the trickster, undermining iconic strategies.

Elsewhere I have already considered in more detail the role of the index in both modern Western art and Chinese painting and calligraphy, but my concern here is to examine the role of the indexical sign in premodern Western art. I wish to consider, however, cases where it can be said to be supportive of iconic signification, rather than its enemy. That such cases exist might seem to count against the argument which I have just been sketching, but this is not in fact so. In modern Western painting the new emphasis on indexical reference did undermine the mimetic system because visible brush traces were signs of the body of the artist. The category of indexical signs I am considering here are those which signify the represented body. Such signs, I will argue, function to shore up, to reinforce, the sometimes fragile power of mimetic art, helping it to perform more convincingly its task of making the represented body as immediately present as possible.

In early Christian culture, which I would like to consider at some length, one could argue for a stronger version of the proposition I have just been outlining. Here the importance of the index is arguably even more evident than at later times, and it is the iconic which takes the supplementary role to begin with. The indexical precedes the iconic, clearing a space in which it can appear and grow in importance over time until it overshadows the index, relegating it to the supporting position.

The context within which the indexical has this early importance is the cult of relics. Representational art did not play a significant ritual function in Christianity from the very beginning, [2] but when it came to do so it achieved its position by taking on some of the functions which relics had performed in earlier years. Ernst Kitzinger, speaking of Greek Christianity and dating the beginning of the shift of emphasis from relics to images to the late sixth and seventh centuries, writes that `the forms which the cult of icons took are strikingly similar to those one encounters in the cult of relics`.[3] In particular he mentions the belief in magical power, so important in the early cult of images, as something that had been associated with the cult of relics all along. In the Western church, where relics played a central role until much later, [4] we see a consequent delay in the development of representational art as a resource for Christianity - even if the possibilities of the iconic are perhaps more fully developed there eventually.

In distinguishing between relics and art as resources used by Christianity I do not mean to claim that relics are indexical signs and that images are iconic signs. The index and the icon are modes of signification rather than categories of objects, and indeed no one type of sign (whether icon, index or symbol, to use the terminology of Charles Sanders Peirce) is ever found in pristine isolation. [5] What I am attempting to claim, however, is that iconicity is the dominant mode in the case of images, whereas indexicality is privileged in the case of relics. This is so because it is by means of its indexical quality, its contiguity with or status as a trace of the saint, that the relic functions to make present that holy figure to the faithful.

One could attempt to classify relics in terms of their apparent [6] indexical proximity to what they represent. At one end of the scale might come something that had been in contact with a saint's relic - a relic of a relic, as it were. A greater degree of closeness might be afforded by something which had been in contact with the living body of the saint (such as an item of clothing), and perhaps something which bore visible traces of that living body would have a higher value again - since it would have inscribed upon it its status as an index. Beyond this might be the category of objects which are products of the body (such as hair, milk, or tears) followed by fragments of the body itself, a category extending up to include the `whole` body of the saint. [7]

Whatever the degree of metonymic distance involved, all relics function to evoke the presence of the holy figure they refer to. For this to occur their status as signs must be denied - rather than being a reminder of a saint, a reference to him, his bones are to be taken as the saint himself. Gregory of Nyasa, for instance, approaches this identification in his remarks on the adoration of relics: `those who behold them embrace, as it were, the living body itself in its full flower, they bring eye, mouth, ear, all their senses into play, and then, shedding tears of reverence and passion, they address to the martyr their prayer of intercession as though he were hale and present`. [8]

Not only does the saint appear so present in the relic that one can talk to him, but communication is felt to occur in the other direction too. The abolition of spatial and temporal distance is so great that the saint`s relics can perform miracles, can act on their present day surroundings. Indeed, the ability of relics to display miraculous powers would have been taken as the strongest and perhaps only necessary proof of their authenticity. Saint Helena was able to tell Christ's cross apart from its two companions because it performed a miracle.

Through their production of a sense of holy presence relics helped sustain the structures of Christian ideology - their (literally) tangible quality would have provided a point of contact with a system of beliefs whose credibility might otherwise have been eroded by an abstractness. An analysis of the function of relics does not end, however, with discussion of the role they played in inculcating religious beliefs. The power relics were felt to have led to their being involved more broadly in the field of social activity. According to Patrick Geary`s Furta Sacra, for instance, the prominence of relics during the period between 800 and 1100 was largely due to conscious Carolingian policy. Promotion of relic use can be seen in the reenactment (801 and 813) of the canon of the Council of Carthage requiring that all altars lacking relics should be destroyed. Charles the Great (who had a compartment for the insertion of relics in his emperor's throne) made the practice of swearing oaths on relics the norm, extending their status in the legal sphere as well. [9]

Because of the power which was felt to reside in relics many rulers utilized them in order to bolster their own political stature. The possession of the remains of St. Peter, for instance, helped provide a basis for the authority of the popes, and newly consecrated bishops would (till 1078) take oaths of allegiance to the papacy on his body. It was not, of course, a case of people merely exploiting the relics that happened to be in their possession: many rulers went to great trouble in actively accumulating relics on account of the prestige they bestowed. Louis IX of France, who acquired the crown of thorns in 1238 from King Baldwin II (the Latin king of Jerusalem), and Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, who had by 1520 accumulated 19,013 relics, are but two examples of this tendency. The latter`s enormous collection would have entitled him to a reduction on time spent in purgatory of 1,902,202 years and 270 days, on account of the indulgences given by the papacy to those who offered reverence to relics. [10]

Not all the impetus for the cult of relics came from above. Religious communities were also active in acquiring them, as Geary has demonstrated in his study of medieval relic theft. Despite attempts to control the movement of saints` remains [11], `translations` were widespread, and would often be justified as obedience to the will of the saint involved, who might perhaps have expressed the desire to have his body moved in a dream. Possession of a relic would provide a monastic community with some degree of autonomy from secular power in a time of political turmoil, since they could respond to pressure by `humiliating` relics - subjecting them to symbolic indignities - and thereby bring public opinion to their defense. Relics could also provide direct economic benefits to a community because of the pilgrims they would draw. The relics of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral offer a particularly good illustration of this: the various shrines to that saint drew in a revenue of one thousand and seventy-one pounds in 1120.[12]

Because of the central importance of relics in medieval life - the many functions they served - demand for them was great. One way in which this demand was met was through the `discovery` of new relics, but clearly such a method is not altogether satisfactory. The manufacturers involved would need to exercise extreme caution in order to avoid being discovered, would have to have their stories well prepared in advance. In this respect one could perhaps talk of a natural advantage of images over relics (should the former be able to take the latter`s place) since they could be openly (and therefore more easily) produced.

Another means to meet the need for relics was to divide up existing ones, but this too had something less than satisfactory about it. Despite the claim of Theodoret that `when the body is divided... the grace remains undivided` [13] one cannot help but feel that a small piece of bone is somehow less valuable than a whole saint's body, and not just for simple quantitative reasons. The whole body is more acceptable because the indexical link to the saint it shares with the smaller fragment is supplemented by a greater degree of iconic resemblance. Even in the case of relics, which I have categorized as operating primarily through indexical reference, an iconic dimension is already present on occasions. But to the extent that a relic is divided up into fragments this iconicity is destroyed. Here again images have an advantage over relics in that many images of the same subject can be made without a diminishing level of iconicity being experienced. If a relic is multiplied without the process of fragmentation which injures iconicity then it becomes prey to the kind of ridicule John Calvin directed when he noted that St. Giles had a body in Toulouse as well as in the town bearing his name in Languedoc.

A further method of increasing the number of relics which has the advantage of not requiring their fragmentation is the production of what I referred to earlier as a `relic of a relic` when discussing the differing degrees of indexical proximity relics can have to their referent. Such a secondary relic would commonly take the form of oil or of a cloth, one condition being that it should be easily portable. An example of the creation of a relic of this kind can be found in a sixth century account telling how to visit the alleged tomb of St. Peter in Rome. The supplicant is encouraged to open the barriers around the saint's tomb, and then a little window which they should lean through to ask for what they needed. The instructions to the pilgrim then state that `if he would like to have a holy relic, he should leave a small cloth there`. Following this, he is required to pray, fast and wait, `and then - by an amazing wonder the cloth which he draws up from the tomb will be rich with divine power`. [14] Biblical authority could be invoked to support a practice of this kind: Luke 8.44 reports the healing of a woman (the `Hemorrhissa`) who had touched the hem of Christ's garment, whilst Acts 19.12 tells that `handkerchiefs and aprons` were taken to the sick from St. Paul's (living) body `and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them`.

When images first start to be used in Christian ritual they appear to fill a role analogous to that of secondary relics: they enable the buoyant demand for portable objects imbued with a sense of holy presence to be fulfilled. It is important to note, furthermore, that they seem able to evoke that sense of presence primarily because of their (claimed) indexical link to the holy body - that is, in the same way as the relics. In early accounts of images in the Christian tradition that indexical link tends to be stressed as the important factor, over and above the links to their referent via iconic means.

By way of an introductory example we can consider a case which straddles the borderline between the categories of relic and image. Antoninus of Piacenza mentions in the description of his journey to the holy land an impression of Christ's chest and hands miraculously left on the stone column of the flagellation. [15] What seems to be indicated here is something less than a complete image [16], rather we are being told of a particularly special kind of relic. Many objects associated with the passion of Christ have been treated as relics, amongst them the tail of the ass he rode into Jerusalem (Genoa), [17] its skeleton (Vicenza) [18], the porphyry slab on which the soldiers guarding him played dice (St. John Lateran), the table on which the last supper was celebrated, and twenty-eight marble steps from Pilate`s palace in Jerusalem (the `Sancta Scala`). Clearly the column of the flagellation would, of itself, have as much right as those steps (for instance) to be considered as a relic since Christ's body had been in contact with both - the impressions upon it merely serve to underline the indexical link which is already there, to strengthen the sense of contiguity. The relic is further strengthened in that the traces on the column seem to have had an iconic quality, putting it in an even more select group. To this type of relic - namely those wherein an iconic image is produced as an intrinsic effect of the creation of the indexical trace - would belong such examples as the footprint of Mohammed to be seen in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. This latter would share with the marked column another special distinguishing feature: both are indices which claim to have been miraculously created (since they are made in material too resistant to have taken an impression through normally explicable means). The significance of the supernatural index is not only that it testifies to the power of its maker, but that it makes him the conscious active author of the trace.

In other cases the existence of an image is more clearly indicated than in the example I have discussed, but nevertheless the indexical means by which those images came into being is stressed in the accounts, is treated as more central to their value than is their iconicity. This is true, for instance, of the mandylion of Edessa. Although accounts of this image vary in detail, it was said to have been produced by Christ wiping his face on a linen cloth (possibly his own garment, in which case the indexical linkage is further strengthened). This miraculously impressed image was taken to Edessa by Thaddeus where it cured the illness of King Agbar, in accordance with a promise made earlier by Christ in a letter written to the ruler. [19] The mandylion continued to manifest its miracle-working power, acting (according to Evagrius) as a relic might to defend Edessa when it was besieged by the Persians in the sixth century. [20] In the tenth century, because of its fame, it was moved to Constantinople, becoming an imperial possession.

Further examples of images being produced by this technique of (miraculous) imprinting from the living holy body are available. A very similar story to that of the mandylion is told by the pilgrim Antoine de Plaisance, who claims to have seen at Memphis (c570) a holy face miraculously imprinted on a cloth which Christ had used to wash his face. [21] This image displayed its supernatural nature by changing its appearance in front of the spectator's eyes (as the mandylion was also said to do) [22]. Cloth again provides the support for the image in the case of Veronica's veil, a sudarium which became imprinted with Christ's features when she offered it to him to wipe his face on the way to Golgotha. The active authorship of the image by its subject and the direct physical connection with his body are both implied in this verbal picture of a sweat-cloth onto which has been exuded an image. [23]

The idea of a likeness actually made from bodily fluids is also present in another image of Christ on cloth, the very famous Turin Shroud, since certain marks on the image are commonly interpreted as blood stains. Indexical linkage is surely at an even higher level when an image can claim, as in this case, to be made of the represented body and not just by it. The idea of a relic or image as an attempt to make present that which is absent has a particular twist to it in the case of this supposed burial shroud, since the very absence of Christ's body from the sepulchre is so central a part of the biblical narrative at the point where this linen appears in it, as the marker of the spot the body is absent from.

The repeated involvement of cloth as a medium in the cases I have just been considering makes these objects directly analogous to the brandea, the cloths used to transmit power from the relics with which they have come in contact (and which I have already discussed). They differ only in that their (supposed) contact is with the living body rather than the remains of a holy figure, and in that their indexicality is supplemented by their iconicity. One should not overstate, however, the extent to which the iconic has grown in importance here. As the eye-witness accounts of the Turin shroud and Veronica's veil (the two examples which exist today in a more than purely textual form) reveal, the image in neither is particularly easy to see. Rather it is a matter of interpreting and extrapolating from the indexical traces, of seeing the image in those traces. Indeed, had the degree of iconicity been too high in either of these cases it would have had the effect of undermining belief in the (more important) indexical link.

The image of Camuliana, [24] found in Cappadocia but brought in 574 to Constantinople, differs from the images I have already discussed in that it was not created by (a supposed) direct impression of the represented body. The indexical connection to (indeed `authorship` by) the referent are still present however since a miraculous celestial origin is claimed for it. According to a Syriac chronicle of 567 it was found by a woman who had desired to see Christ face to face, in a water basin in her garden. Although there are other images which appear in an analogous manner [25] it seems that this more ineffable kind of origin was perhaps less convincing. This may be conjectured since in a later version of the story Christ appears in person and presses his face against the cloth, and even in the earlier version the celestially produced image itself produces a mechanical copy on the cloth used by its finder to wrap it. [26]

A further category of sacred image, neither celestially produced nor the result of a miraculous printmaking, is represented by the painting of the Virgin and child by St. Luke. That image does not share a property of all the images so far discussed, namely of having been produced by the individual whose body it represents. Nevertheless, it is made by the hand of someone who himself has a holy status, and so retains a degree of indexical proximity to the sacred. Less exalted authorship is present in the case of an image of St. Theodore of Sykeon made surreptitiously by a painter observing him through a small opening in a wall, [27] but the image's having been made in the era of the holy figure does endow it with a degree of connectedness to its subject. [28] That connectedness is enhanced through its having been blessed by the saint after its completion, a form of relation which is also claimed in the case of St. Luke's image of the Virgin. [29]

With discussion of the image of St. Theodore we have begun to enter the realm of images which are openly admitted to have been made by human hands, but even here the theme of indexicality continues, being displayed in differing ways. In the case of the Santissimo Bambino d`Arcoeli in Rome, for example, we have an image which claims to be made of olive wood taken from the Garden of Gethsemane. [30] Indexical contact with the holy is maintained here by the material of the sculpture, the wood being a kind of secondary relic of Christ which has been transformed into an image of him. A further way in which an indexical link is maintained can be seen in the instance of a mosaic of the Virgin being constructed in the Church of the Latomos at Thessaloniki, which supposedly changed miraculously overnight into an image of the young Christ. This story of (as it were) joint divine and human authorship of an image seems almost to have as its subtext a comment on the insufficiency of purely human image production. [31] That same insufficiency is also demonstrated in an account in the Coptic Encomium of St. Menas of a painted image of the saint on a wooden tablet which had to be brought into contact with the saint's remains in order that the saint's `blessing and power` could enter it. [32] Here there is almost a mimicry of, a going through the motions of, the mechanical process of imprinting even though the saint's image is already on the panel. This narrative explicitly constructs the image as a second-best substitute for the relic, as something made by a Phrygian military commander only because the saint's remains (taken with him on an expedition to Libya as a palladium) [33] refused to move any further. The portability of an image, analogous to that of the brandeum, is clearly one of its advantages - this quality enables it to abolish spatial barriers to the saint's presence.

Although I have had occasion to discuss images of St. Theodore and St. Menas, the great majority of the images referred to so far have been representations of Christ or the Virgin. A factor here is the relative absence of primary relics associated with Christ and the Virgin due to their bodily assumption to heaven. Only more indexically distant secondary relics such as the cross (or the tail of the ass and other such items mentioned earlier) have tended to be available in respect of these figures, making them less tangible in relic terms than the saints. [34] Where bodily relics have appeared (as in the case of the Virgin's milk or Christ's milk teeth) their status has been problematic. It was not only Calvin who attacked such relics, even the Catholic Church has been embarrassed by a cult of the holy prepuce in Calcata, north of Rome. Consequently, given the central importance of Christ and the Virgin to church doctrine it is natural that once images become established as an acceptable alternative means to relics of evoking the presence of the holy that these two figures should tend to predominate. To represent a saint when you could represent Christ would be to introduce an unnecessary distance from the sacred, would be to sacrifice one of the advantages that images had over relics. Of course, the very focus of images on the figures of Christ and the Virgin itself reinforced their central importance. [35]

As the history of the man-made image continues, the insufficiency of iconic reference to the holy ceases to be so strongly felt. As the conventions of iconic reference become more familiar, more strongly grounded, the need for support from an indexical link to the same referent becomes less necessary. A sense of presence is evoked primarily by means of the seductive rhetoric of the iconic itself. As Kitzinger notes, [36] most of the early references to adoration or other ceremonial use of images involve an image of miraculous origin, but as image use becomes established this is less necessarily the case. I will have something to say in due course about later images of the Christian tradition, and will argue that indexical support for iconic reference does not altogether disappear, but I would like to consider here one particular subgenre of (undisguisedly) man- made images which, although employing iconic rather than indexical means primarily, still refers back to the cult of magically produced images.

This particular category, which in its earliest manifestations is a further part of the story of transition from relics to images, is that of images which depict miraculously produced images. The many replicas of the mandylion which were to be found in Byzantine churches [37] are images of this kind, offering no claim of indexical proximity to their referent, but depicting images which do have such a claim.

The mandylion is not alone amongst the miraculously produced images already mentioned in being subject to such a secondary elaboration. The fame of the veil of Veronica is magnified by the many sculpted and painted representations that have appeared depicting it, and the Turin shroud (to take a more modern example) is known largely through the photos that have been made of it. [38] What is lost in terms of indexical proximity is to be balanced in these cases not only by the opportunities for multiplication, but by the opportunities for greater legibility. The technical possibilities of photography enabled the image on the Turin shroud to be brought into focus - the body it claimed to be a negative imprint of becomes (positively) visible in a photographic negative. The representation uses its iconic resources to improve upon the original, to specify what to see in it. [39] It exerts a power over that which it is apparently a servant to. In El Greco`s St. Veronica (Munich, Alte Pinkothek), for instance, the face of Christ has a degree of iconic detail which would, if found in the original, have undermined its claims to indexical authenticity. [40]

El Greco`s painting seems to demonstrate the growing hegemony of the iconic over the indexical, the shift of power between them which has occurred. Another example, however, can be used to underline that indexicality does not disappear from Christian art altogether - even when art has attained a high degree of mimetic power it still has moments of doubt concerning its ability to make present the sacred. Guercino`s St. Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin seems to offer (as Arthur Danto suggests) [41] a fairly self-conscious meditation on the difference between the developed mimetic idiom it is employing and the simpler, more archaic style of the image by St. Luke that it depicts. The holy image in this case is itself a painting (as opposed to a trace as in the case of the mandylion or Veronica's Veil) and so this juxtaposition, this doubleness is possible - indeed inevitable: the indexical is not subsumed in, consumed by, the iconic.

Guercino, in Danto`s reading, is not simply displaying the power of his own developed iconic language over that of the archaic painting contained within it. Rather, he is pointing out that despite its more developed mimetic ability, his image is unable to offer the same closeness to its subject that St. Luke's is - a closeness which is demonstrated by the adoring attitude of the angel within the painting towards the subject of St. Luke's. The more the image displays its ability to abolish temporal distance, to make us present at the scene of St. Luke's studio, the more it marks out its difference from the archaic but indexically connected painting it contains - an image more concerned with its relationship to its subject than its relationship to the beholder (who is so directly addressed by the figure of St. Luke in Guercino`s image). It is as if Guercino is saying that the closest he can get to the holy body is to make a representation of a representation of it.

An earlier painting of the St. Luke painting which experiences none of the complications found here is the Altdorfer Schone Maria of Regensburg (c1519-22). [42] Rather than representing St. Luke in the act of painting this is simply a version (via an intermediary version) of the S. Maria Maggiore `original` itself. Altdorfer`s image in turn came to be regarded as capable of working miracles, its power perhaps being enhanced (indexically) by its placement on the site of an earlier miracle of the virgin. [43]

Persistence of the importance of the indexical in the face of the growing power of (iconic) images, a theme I have been alluding to here, can be demonstrated in a further way. Even when no miraculous origin is claimed for a miracle-working image, direct contact with it, or contact via an intermediary object, will characteristically be required for its power to be transmitted. The metonymic dimension is preserved in the use of images even when it is being abandoned in respect of the creation of them. Since we are as likely nowadays to encounter the images of Christian art in an art museum (or if in a church, in a church-as-a-site-of-tourism) it is perhaps particularly important to emphasize the ritual role associated with them before aesthetic distance was invented and in places where it has not intruded. The attentive visitor to a Catholic church will soon become aware that tactile responses to, say, a sculptural representation of a holy figure have not disappeared for everyone, [44] but in the museum physical contact with art works is explicitly taboo.

Contact with the image can be effected in a variety of ways. Touching is common, but ingestion also occurs. Freedberg [45] mentions the eating of paper images obtained from pilgrimage shrines, and in one story a fragment of the original artwork is used - plaster scraped from a fresco depicting Sts. Cosmas and Damian being mixed with water to form a health-giving potion. This latter method offers an extreme example of somatic contact with the holy body, [46] calling to mind the Eucharist. [47]

A parallel with relics is seen in cases where some intermediary object is required to transfer the image's miracle- working power. Earlier I noted how images could function as means of transmitting the power of relics, and here we can consider cases where images (now increased in status) themselves make use of such subsidiary materials. Two examples can be found in the Life of Theodore of Sykeon: [48] on one occasion he is said to have been cured of the bubonic plague by drops of dew which fell on him from an image of Christ which happened to have been above him in a Church, and on another he prayed in front of an image famous for exuding a sweet-smelling oil, with the result that oil gathered into a bubble and poured down into his eyes. Even the miraculously-created mandylion required an intermediary of this kind to perform its feat of protecting Edessa from the Persian siege. Water which had been sprinkled on the face of the image was applied to a fire which then consumed an artificial hill the Persians had been building as an assault tower. [49]

Parallel to the role played by dew, oil and water in the stories recounted above is a particular category of intermediary material associated with images, that of bodily substances secreted by or otherwise extracted from images. Calvin talks of crucifixes at Salvatierra and Orange on which beards are said to grow, and others that are said to shed tears, [50] and these certainly illustrate the phenomenon I am describing. Other illustrations are found in stories where images bleed when attacked. In Writing in Gold, Robin Cormack notes that this is said to have occurred in the case of an image of Christ at Berytus, and with a mosaic of the Virgin and Child on Cyprus. David Freedberg notes accounts of the same thing happening in the case of the Madonna dell`Arco (near Naples) after it had been hit by a ball thrown by a young man. [51] Clearly actual bodily products would provide a greater degree of indexical proximity than mere water or oil, and are therefore preferable. They have the advantage of demonstrating the presence of the represented holy figure in the image, are themselves miraculous products as opposed to being merely miracle-working. In the case of Christ and the Virgin this habit of producing bodily relics would, of course, have been particularly welcome, because of the (aforementioned) scarcity of the latter due to bodily assumption into heaven. From holy bodies producing images we have moved to a consideration of images producing holy bodies, or at least their fluids and other associated materials. [52]

The proximity of art objects to relics, and the gradual draining of power from one to the other which this enables, can also be seen in the case of a category of art object not yet considered, namely the reliquary. Early examples of this kind of object are provided by the ampullae used by pilgrims to carry away oil from holy sites. Strictly speaking, these are containers for secondary relics, making it possible for a liquid substance to fulfill such a role. The support they give is more than purely physical, however: they tend (from the fifth century, according to Andre Grabar) [53] to be decorated with images which provide iconic assistance to the relic's task of making the holy body present. An ampulla bearing an image of St. Menas, for example, helps sustain the relatively weak indexical link of its contents to that saint, enables visualization of him.

Reliquaries in the sense in which the term is normally understood come into prominence in a later period, and although the desire for portability continued to be a factor influencing their design (with pendant and ring forms being amongst those adopted) this did not preclude the employment of images any more than it had in the case of the ampullae. A reliquary-pendant in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum depicting Catherine of Alexandria on the front (inventory number M 350- 1912) illustrates this quite clearly.

More interesting to consider, however, are those cases where iconicity begins to play a more active role - affecting the form of the reliquary as a whole, as opposed to being merely embodied in marks inscribed upon its surface. This happens when the reliquary takes the shape of the part of the saint's body that it is supposed to contain, as in the 13th century Flemish hand reliquary, also from the Victoria and Albert Museum (inventory number M 353-1956). In the case of this type of reliquary the container iconically represents its content, supplementing the illegible remains inside through its idealized image of them. The primacy of those remains is indicated by the presence of holes in the reliquary enabling contact with it to be sustained: the partial iconic representation of the saint's body is not adequate in isolation, it cannot completely envelop the relic.

Iconicity arguably performs an even more useful service as a supplement to indexicality in the case of head or bust shaped reliquaries, given the importance of this part of the body in conveying a sense of personality. The Metropolitan Museum's reliquary head of St. Yrieix (Limoges, c1220-1240) originally contained the saint's skull, which would have offered a relatively powerful indexical link but one lacking the facial features this reliquary cover is able to provide. In this instance, in contrast to the arm reliquary, one is tempted to see the outer silver and parcel gilt covering not so much as a replication of its contents as a substitute for the flesh which was the skull's original `container`. As with the arm reliquary, a route of direct access to the relic is preserved: a grill in the top and hole in the wooden interior core permit viewing. The frequent utilization of transparent materials such as crystal in reliquaries must be motivated in part by the desire to preserve access to the relic whilst permitting formal elaboration (including iconic effects) to proceed.

The type of reliquary in which iconicity gains the greatest degree of power is that in which the entire figure is represented. Here we see the same pattern as with the miraculous images already discussed: iconicity, which began as the servant of indexicality, has attained with time to a dominance over the latter. The statue of St. Foy at Conques, perhaps the oldest [54] surviving large-scale free-standing Christian sculpture in Western Europe, exemplifies this kind of reliquary. Containing the remains of the saint which had been stolen from the town of Agen (the skull is in the head part of the statue) [55] it nevertheless radically exceeds what is necessary to provide a container for its contents, or an idealized `artist's impression` of them. It iconically presents the whole of which the relic is the fragment.

Contemporary literary evidence relating to the cult of St. Foy indicates the extent of her influence on her environment, the degree to which she was felt to be an active presence in Conques. [56] She is recorded as performing miracles to cure illness or to release captives, for instance. Bernard of Angers (sent by the Bishop of Chartres to investigate the saint's cult) displays his initial scepticism concerning the statue by the careful wording of the prayer he made on approaching it: `St. Faith [Foy], part of whose body is present here enshrined in this likeness, help me in the day of judgment`. [57] Nevertheless, there is evidence which suggests that perhaps less theologically refined observers saw St. Foy as being present in her statue and not merely in her relics. People claimed, for instance, that the statue was alive and looking at them, or that the saint had appeared to them in a vision in the form of her statue.

According to Benedicta Ward, the statue of St. Foy at Conques was kept above the high altar, and pilgrims were allowed access to it at all times. Not only, however, was the statue a focus for pilgrimage (the movement of people wishing to be in her miracle-working presence), she herself was often on the move, abolishing spatial barriers to her presence through her own initiative. When taken out in a procession (which might last all day) the statue would be accompanied by music. Much revenue would be raised on these excursions, with miraculous cures occurring not just to those who saw her, but even at the places where she had rested on her journeys. On one occasion the mobility of the St. Foy image enabled her to be moved into the cloisters to quell a riot there [58], and in the early eleventh century she even attended a synod called by Bishop Arnaldus of Rodez. [59]

The reliquary statue of St.Foy at Conques is not an isolated phenomenon - many further examples still exist and textual evidence points to the one-time existence of others. Bernard of Angers, writing of the St. Foy statue says that `it is an old usage and ancient custom in the whole country of the Auvergne, whether in the Rouergue or Toulouse, and in all the country around, for a statue to be set up either of gold or silver or of some other metal, in which the head of the saint or some other part of the body is preserved with reverence`. [60] From an early manuscript by Gregory of Tours [61] comes evidence of a statue of the Virgin which contained some of her hair, as well as drops of her milk and pieces of her clothing. This reliquary statue was constructed of a gold covering over (like the St Foy statue) a wooden core. It had been made for Bishop Stephen II in about 946 (that is, before even the St. Foy image) [62] and existed at one time in the Clermont-Ferrand cathedral treasury. [63]

The Clermont-Ferrand Madonna appears to have been a forerunner of the Throne of Majesty type of sculpture, which Ilene Forsyth refers to as `the cult statue of the middle ages, because in it divine presence seemed more fully concentrated`. [64] Many examples of this sedes sapientiae type (such as the Metropolitan Museum's Twelfth Century Morgan Madonna) also contain reliquary compartments. This is particularly so of the earlier examples, indicating a role for relics in making sculpture in the round acceptable in the Christian context. [65] That later sculptures are less likely to contain relics can be regarded as evidence that those images had taken over some of the functions of the relics, that the iconic means of evoking presence was becoming established. [66]

Forsyth`s account of the Throne of Wisdom images emphasizes the extent to which these statues were felt to embody their referents, to act as a valid substitute for them, and shows how they are able, for this reason, to function as active social entities. In many ways they fulfill the range of functions which I have previously noted had been undertaken by relics, for example by fundraising for the community which owned them [67] or acting as protectors against outside forces. Furthermore, just as an oath could be taken on a relic so too it could be taken before a statue of the Madonna: prior to the Sixteenth Century, knights swore feudal oaths in the presence of the golden Madonna of Hildesheim. [68] These statues, however, also functioned to embody presence in ways unavailable to relics because of their lack of iconic qualities. Forsyth convincingly argues for instance that they would have played a part in liturgical drama: `A most appropriate role for the statue was that of the enthroned Madonna and Child in the Officium Stellae, a medieval play which was performed at the Epiphany to commemorate the Adoration of the Magi. As participants in this play the revered wood figures of Mary and the Christ Child were presiding presences, witnessing the mimetic re-enactment of the visit of the three kings. They received the homage and offerings of high clerics dressed as the Kings in the realistic dramatization which preceded the drama of the Mass itself at the feast of Epiphany`. [69]

Thanks in part to the reliquary statue, even in the Western church the status of the image eventually became more assured and its use more widespread. Nevertheless, in those later periods which can be thought of as high points of Christian artistic culture some indexical backing for this predominantly iconic means can still be seen. Even when an image does not have a miraculous origin or house a relic it is often created for a specific site close to where a relic can be found, such as a chapel containing a saint's remains.

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