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Home > About Us > Collaborating Institutions > SCS > Luce Seminars > 2002"Mourning Into Dancing": Spiritual Conversion At Silos
Project for the 2002 Wolterstorff Seminar
James R. Blaettler, S.J.
Given the centrality of Christ's resurrection to Christianity, a monastic visualization of spiritual conversion as an upward movement should not be surprising. At the high medieval Spanish monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos in north central Spain, a series of Passion and Resurrection sculptures presents such an understanding. Paralleling religious texts on conversion, relief sculptors at Silos invited her monks to explore a classical topos: the cosmic dance of paradise. Like early Christian writers Silos artists adopted the metaphor of the choral dance from Antiquity to imply that the angels in heaven celebrated spiritual conversions. And monks mimicked such angels.
Mircea Eliade in his Rites and Symbols of Initiation argues that death and resurrection are evoked in tandem by initiation rites around the world. The pre-Christian rites referenced in the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries near Pompeii (50 BCE) present images of mourning and dancing adjacent to one another; they imply complementary parts of a rich ritual of initiation. In the Middle Ages Easter morning celebrations, such as those mentioned in the tenth-century Moissac hymnal, hailed Christ's reversal of fortune; they often included ring dances, with Christ understood as the leader. Eliade notes how the Christian tradition added another dynamic to religious initiation by associating the womb with the tomb. One could push Eliade's remarks further, in view of a visual assertion at Silos that Mary's virginal womb and Christ's tomb together give a deeper rationale for the key place of Christian initiation: the baptismal font. The monastic rite of induction, traditionally regarded as a Second Baptism, recalled the monk's symbolic rebirth after reentering Christ's death.
Chrysostom of Constantinople in the East and Ambrose of Milan in the West, while cautious about excesses, saw physical dance as potentially spiritual. The Hebrew Bible's reminders that there is "a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Eccl 3:4) and that the Lord had changed the psalmist's "mourning into dancing" (Ps 30:12) are echoed in the New Testament. Poetically imaged are Christ's remarks about those who sink into spiritual apathy: "We played the flute for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge for you, but you did not mourn" (Mt 11:16-17).
The Silos image of the resurrected Christ (fig 1 (Right)), situated in a relief based on the Emmaus story (Lk 24:13-35), is cited often in art history surveys to signal an ongoing medieval fascination with pilgrimage. Dressed as a pilgrim to St. James of Compostela in the west of Spain, the Silos Christ figure evokes for James Snyder and others a "dancing prophet," comparable to contemporary twelfth-century French monastic images of the prophet Jeremiah at Moissac and the prophet Isaiah at Souillac. In fact, the Silos Christ figure can be understood as part of a larger visual repertoire that challenged monks to a reform of heart through continual penitential practices.
For Ambrose the baptized are those who have swifter feet for the ascent, whereby one puts on Christ. In fact, Ambrose seems to have encouraged those approaching the baptismal font to do so dancing. The Silos Emmaus Christ figure begins to enflesh Ambrose's remarks on how dance was that carrying of the body, whereby spiritual ascent allowed one to float, ecstatically. The seemingly conflicted Silos Emmaus Christ figure has a body that synthesizes the partial movements of the two disciples whom Christ leads and gently incorporates into himself. The Emmaus Christ might be seen as the choragus or dance leader, the New Moses who is a history-conscious teacher
expanding his role as a prophet who would move others to conversion (Lk 24:27; fig 2 (Left)).
The Silos Emmaus Christ figure might be read not only as hovering in expectation but also as perched potentially for leaping. The idea of a "leaping Logos" is found in the writings of the third-century church theologian, Hippolytus. The Latin word most often used in the Middle Ages for dance, tripudium, signaled a leap. David's dance before the Ark as it was brought to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:16) included leaping. Miriam's dance after a successful passage with her fellow Israelites across the Red Sea (Ex 15:20-21) might easily have included it as well. The leap of John the Baptist in his mother's womb (Lk 1:44) has been regarded by one writer as his first dance; it also might be read as prophetic of his demise. For Salome's dance occasioned John's death in prison (Mt 14:6-12).
The Silos sculptural relief of a gathering of apostles with the resurrected Christ focuses on the doubting Thomas' touch (Jn 20:24-29; fig 3 (Right)). The sculpture serves as the most specific Silos example of how dance might offer not only a metaphor for striving towards a better future but also illustrate spiritual reconciliation in the present. In the superstructure above the encounter between Thomas and Christ the sculptor has placed doubled images of a horn
player and a tambourine player; that is, the figures mirror and thus reinforce each other (fig 4 (Left)). In his monumental study of this sculpture the notable United States art historian, Meyer Schapiro, interpreted the inclusion of the musicians as a reflection of how secular society intruded into sacred monastic solitude. Yet, if one considers the history of medieval Easter celebrations within churches and monasteries and the Eastertide commentaries, the playing musicians clearly signal spiritual accompaniment.
Given the fact that St. Paul would not have been present at the event in the upper room, his prominence in the sculpture is noteworthy; he is placed next to Christ. Might this be the Paul who Ambrose remarked had "danced" his spirituality? Paul's feet move ahead in profile, in step with those of a lunging Thomas on the other side of Christ. Paul's figure attempts to gracefully incorporate Thomas' broader actions and thereby reconcile him to his surrounding companions (fig 5 (Right)). Logically, Paul's role in an apostolic dance means he puts on Christ and simultaneously aligns himself as a worthy peer with those with whom he sought so earnestly to identify (Rom 1:5).
The gyrations of the figures in the Silos reliefs manifest sensuous but disciplined bodily movements, what Schapiro characterized as "feminine." Already in the earliest of the Silos reliefs it is clear that the moving figure played a prominent role. In the Pentecost relief "tongues as of fire" (Acts 2:3) seem to have transformed the bodies of the apostles, who appear to be refined, flickering flames (fig 6 (Left)). They echo Ambrose's understanding that dancing could manifest "burning faith."
Considering the long history of church dance, especially in Spain, it is not surprising that there would be prohibitions aimed at stopping excesses, whether they were in the church proper, its porch or yard. Some scholarly references to legislation signaling restrictions and prohibitions often give the impression that early approval of dance in the church had been revoked universally. In the wake of some of the earliest legislation, it is telling that Isidore of Seville (560-636 CE) was commissioned to provide a dance for Toledo. In view of the lack of choreographic notations in the Silos manuscripts, one only can surmise the extent to which the Silos cloister reliefs might mirror actual dance in the monastery.
The Silos cloister sculptures might be read as enticements to the praying monk to reenact his vowed commitment. Becoming an active participant in such a demanding and risky process required that he daily reengage his conversion. For the fervent monk to allow himself to leap into dance - whether in a formal monastic liturgy or not – would have encouraged him to live a perfectly logical and sensible spiritual metaphor. Being perched for a cosmic dance, he might even experience the transfiguration of his monastic state of stability (which might find its symbol in the splayed feet of the Christ in fig 6). Like the Israelites returning from exile the monk could enact spiritual purification by a constant relocation of his desires; his own progressive spiritual twists and turns could be read as a cleansing dance. In this context the Latin adjective for Silos, exsilense, could be understood as a collective reminder of the disciplined monastic returns to paradise from the exiles of sin. The sorrows involved in wandering on the earth could be resolved by a spiritual pilgrimage performed by better placed steps. And that uplifting experience would be worth celebrating, by at least a dance or two.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Doug Adams and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, eds. Dance as Religious Studies. New
York: Crossroad, 1990.
E. Louis Backman. Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine.
Tr. by E. Classen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1952; reprinted 1977.
Mircea Eliade. Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. Tr.
by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
James Miller. Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian
Antiquity. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1986.
Meyer Schapiro. "From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos." Romanesque Art: Selected
Papers, Vol. 1. New York: George Braziller, 1977, pp. 28-101.