You must have a much better ability to view things abstractly than I do. I am getting along in years, but the older I get, the more that kind of stuff thoroughly creeps me out, above and beyond any other artistic and historic considerations. Perhaps the ever more present sense of my own personal mortality has something to do with it. But it might also be about my ever more vivid sense of just how horribly bloody and tortured so much of Christian thought and history is.
But I guess parts of art history have always had a certain Grand Guignol element, since pain and suffering are ever popular as themes, and I can imagine sort of getting off intellectually by being creeped out, so I guess it might be just the ticket for those who are into it.
Anyway, for some reason, those pics reminded me about the nun being crucified in Romania a few years back:
Yes, exactly. And you could take that to mean that it's a religion that tries, however inadequately or hypocritically, to grapple with the centrality of suffering in human life, especially suffering inflicted by one person on another. And if sometimes things tip over into the glorification of suffering, that too is a problem worth contemplating.
6 comments:
Ugh. Not really into human sacrifice all that much.
Not exactly mine either. I'm a secular Jew with a background in medieval history and a fascination with Christian iconography.
You must have a much better ability to view things abstractly than I do. I am getting along in years, but the older I get, the more that kind of stuff thoroughly creeps me out, above and beyond any other artistic and historic considerations. Perhaps the ever more present sense of my own personal mortality has something to do with it. But it might also be about my ever more vivid sense of just how horribly bloody and tortured so much of Christian thought and history is.
But I guess parts of art history have always had a certain Grand Guignol element, since pain and suffering are ever popular as themes, and I can imagine sort of getting off intellectually by being creeped out, so I guess it might be just the ticket for those who are into it.
Anyway, for some reason, those pics reminded me about the nun being crucified in Romania a few years back:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4107524.stm
Good grief. Horrifying and deadly ignorance there.
Yes: Christianity is a religion whose most important symbol is an instrument of torture.
Yes, exactly. And you could take that to mean that it's a religion that tries, however inadequately or hypocritically, to grapple with the centrality of suffering in human life, especially suffering inflicted by one person on another. And if sometimes things tip over into the glorification of suffering, that too is a problem worth contemplating.
Yep.
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