THE HEAVENS PROCLAIM PAPAL PRIMACY:
THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE SISTINE CEILING
©2008 by Elhanan Motzkin
La bonne clef doit ouvrir toutes les portes. Si une
porte ne s’ouvre pas, ce n’est pas la bonne clef.
- Daniel Arrasse
2
Contents
Introduction
4
Generalities
8
The underlying ideology of the Sistine ceiling
11
The central scenes
24
The medallions
69
The ignudi
94
The composition and fictive architecture of the central area
102
The bronze-colored demons
104
The prophets and the sibyls
108
The ancestors and the corner scenes
142
The message of the wall frescoes
169
Who drew up the program of the Sistine ceiling?
175
Conclusion
184
3
Introduction
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo in 1508-12, is the totemic work of art of the High Renaissance, and our perception of it colors decisively our perception of the Renaissance as a whole. It has been more thoroughly studied than perhaps
any other work of art in the western world.1 Nevertheless, if it has an underlying theme or
message, and what that theme or message may be, is still in dispute; and while we know,
or think we know, what most of the scenes and figures represent, why these particular
scenes and figures are depicted in preference to others and why they are arranged as they
are is unclear. In other words, we do not understand the reasoning behind the program.
The individual elements too are sometimes strange, and the attitudes and gestures
of the figures are often puzzling. For example, why does God in the Creation of Adam embrace a nude woman with his left arm while pointing at Adam with his right? In no other
Creation of Adam is God represented thus. There are other quirks on the ceiling, that is,
things that occur here, and only here. The ancestors of Christ are shown as nuclear families here, and only here. Noah and Jonah are so very prominent here, and only here. And
what is the point (purpose, meaning…) of the embarrassingly large sitting nude youths?
The list of difficulties that cry out for an explanation is long.2
In what follows I propose new answers to these questions. The answers are interrelated, since it turns out that a single guiding idea informs the program: glorifying the
Pope. The program of the Sistine ceiling is unique, and it is not (or at least ought not to be)
surprising that the ideological message it conveys is also unique. That some elements of
the ceiling are in honor of the Pope has been remarked before, but in fact the papalist
1
For the interpretations of the ceiling up to 1962, see the notes in Paola Barocchi’s edition of Giorgio Vasari,
‘La Vita di Michelangelo’, Milan and Naples 1962. More recent suggestions can be found in ‘Michelangelo:
Selected Scholarship in English’, vol. 2: The Sistine Chapel, edited by William E. Wallace, New York 1995.
The notes and references (not to mention the text) in Edgar Wind, ‘The Religious Symbolism of Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling’, edited by Elizabeth Sears, OUP 2000, are invaluable.
2
A list of open questions can be found in John O’Malley, “The Theology behind Michelangelo’s Ceiling”, in
Massimo Giacometti, ed., ‘The Sistine Chapel’, New York 1985, pp. 92-148.
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theme generates the program and permeates the whole ceiling.
The principal thesis of the ceiling is papal primacy or papalism, which says that all
temporal as well as all spiritual authority on earth stems from the Pope.1 This doctrine
determined the formal shape of the central area, the contents of the scenes, and many details. In the sixties of the last century Ettlinger showed that the ideological message of the
wall frescoes, which had been painted in the 1480’s, was papal primacy.1 Here we show
that papal primacy is also the ideological message of the ceiling. The papalist message accounts for most of the ceiling’s oddities, and the remaining riddles will also be addressed
and, hopefully, elucidated.
The Sistine ceiling is rich and many-faceted, both in conception and in execution,
and, in conformity with medieval literary and religious theories, it has several layers of
meaning. These are developed systematically and in detail. Many arguments for papal supremacy or primacy figure on the ceiling; practically all reiterate well-known pronouncements made repeatedly throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Some assertions
had an immediate application to contemporary issues.
The points made are as follows. The Popes are the successors of a series of preceding supreme legislators, beginning with God. Papal primacy is implied by the celestial hierarchies of angels and by the celestial spheres. It is part of the divine law. It follows from
the Popes’ powers over the angels and the demons. The Pope is the image of Christ on
earth. The Church is the spouse of the Pope, and both the temporal and the spiritual
swords are at the service of the Church. Enemies of the Pope and the Church, and in particular rebels, will be severely punished. We owe the Pope the same respect and obedience
we owe our parents. The Pope is the supreme judge on earth: he judges others, but only
1
'Papal primacy' originally meant only the precedence of Peter over the other apostles, but it gradually came
to signify papal supremacy. For detailed presentations of papalist theology see W. Ullmann, ‘The Growth of
Papal Government in the Middle Ages’, London 1955; W. Ullmann, ‘Medieval Papalism: the Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists’, London 1949; J. Rivière, ‘Le problème de l’église et de l’état au temps de
Philippe le Bel’, Louvain and Paris 1926; and, especially, Michael Wilks, ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in the
Later Middle Ages: The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists’, Cambridge, 1964.
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God can judge him. The Pope’s jurisdiction is universal and extends to non-Christians.
And even unworthy Popes should be honored. The last few assertions were especially topical, and in response to the current political and ideological circumstances.
While papalist theory largely determined the program, two other factors played a
role as well. First, the Sistine Chapel is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, and
some aspects of the ceiling are, at least in part, in honor of the Virgin. And second, adjacent elements harmonize whenever possible. I.e., the ideological framework fixed the nature of the scenes and the generic identity of the figures, but when this left some leeway
the specific elements were selected and positioned so that neighbors should have something in common, either conceptually or compositionally. That the principle of neighborly
harmony and the dedication of the Chapel to the Assumption influenced the iconography
has been suggested before; here we point out exactly where and how these two considerations intervened in the program.
Our thesis concerning Julius II’s 1508-12 ceiling also clarifies some aspects of the
frescoes on the walls of the Chapel, which were painted a quarter-century earlier under
Sixtus IV. The ceiling continues and completes the wall frescoes in that the message of
both is papal primacy, that both illustrate the precursors of the Popes and the Church, and
that together they outline the divine law. We can now see precisely why opposite the series
of frescoes on the right wall representing the life of Christ there is a life specifically of Moses, and why here this unique confrontation was unavoidable. The wall frescoes will therefore also be briefly discussed.
The Sistine ceiling is one of Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces, but the ceiling’s
elaborate and systematically developed papalist ideology makes it unlikely that he was the
author of the program. He may have been responsible for some of the particular choices:
the names and the appearances of the sibyls, for example, derive from a fifteenth-century
1
See L. D. Ettlinger, ‘The Sistine Chapel Before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy’, Oxford 1965.
6
text with no ideological content, and such details may well have been left to Michelangelo
to decide by himself. A professional theologian, however, must have drawn up most of the
program, and we will attempt to conjecture who that theologian may have been.
The purely medieval character of the assumptions underlying the message of the
Sistine ceiling implies that in this centrally important case the ideological motivations and
outlook of the Renaissance were strictly medieval. We briefly discuss how this result affects the much debated question of whether and to what extent the Renaissance was a revolt against or a continuation of the Middle Ages. We also speculate on why the political
content of the ceiling was not perceived before. The basic idea seems natural enough: to
suppose that the decoration of an official papal chapel might be papalist seems obvious.
Generalities
Description and Terminology
7
In this section we describe briefly the layout of the ceiling and we fix the more contentious terms.
The ceiling is a flattened rectangular dome, with penetrations cutting into the vault
on all sides. The upper surfaces of the penetrations form curved triangles, which are designated by different, confusing and contradictory terms in the literature. Here the curved
triangles will be called ‘curved triangles’.
In each corner of the ceiling the two curved triangles next to the corner are joined
to constitute a squinch-like corner space. These corner spaces too possess many names. In
this article the corner spaces will be called ‘corner spaces’.
The ceiling decoration overflows the ceiling proper to cover fan-shaped areas on
the walls between the rounded tops of the windows and the curved lower edges of the triangles. These areas are called ‘lunettes’ nowadays. This is not a good name, because Michelangelo’s pupil and biographer Condivi used the term ‘lunette’ to designate the curved
triangles. However there is no point in fighting the current usage, which is universal.
The ceiling decoration consists of three concentric zones. The central zone is
framed by a painted rectangular cornice and contains nine scenes, alternately narrow and
wide, with stories from Genesis. Fake medallions flank the narrow scenes, and both the
scenes and the medallions are framed by seated nude youths called ignudi.
The second zone occupies the area between this rectangle and the penetrations cutting into the vault. It has prophets, sibyls and bronze-colored demons in it; small putti
under the prophets and sibyls display their names.
The third zone is composed of the painted areas inside the penetrations: the curved
triangles, the lunettes under them, and the corner spaces. The lunettes include tablets with
the names of the ancestors of Jesus, and both the curved triangles and the lunettes contain
seated family groups. The scenes in the corner spaces recount rescues of the Jewish people
from annihilation and loss of national identity. Two lunettes were later destroyed by Mi-
8
chelangelo when he painted the Last Judgment on the altar wall, but what they looked like
is known through copies.
More detailed descriptions of the various parts of the ceiling will be supplied below
as needed.
The Questions
In the Introduction we mentioned some of the problems posed by the iconography
of the ceiling. Here is a more complete list: 1. Is the painted architecture on the ceiling
significant? 2. The narrow blue strips in the central area before and after the complex of
scenes and medallions imply that the central area opens up on the heavens. What’s heavenly about the central area? 3. Why does the series of scenes begin with the creation? Why
are the creations of the sun, moon and plants depicted but not those of the stars and the
animals? Why are three whole scenes devoted to the story of Noah? 4. What is the point of
the male nudes surrounding the central scenes? Why are the nudes sitting down? Why are
they so big? What do their bands mean, and why are they stepping on them? 5. Why are
there medallions on the ceiling? Why ten? Why are the medallions connected to the ignudi? Why are they gilded? Why is the gilding worn? 6. What is the theme of the medallions, and how were the episodes represented on them chosen? Why are the scenes in the
medallions perpendicular to the central scenes? Why is one of the medallions blank? 7.
How were the prophets and sibyls selected? How were they placed? What are their appearances supposed to illustrate? And why are they separated by demons? 8. Why is Jonah
so big and central? 9. Why are the figures in the lunettes and the curved triangles nuclear
families? What are they doing, and why are the families in the triangles in darkness? Why
are the families in the bay nearest the altar wall different to the others? 10. For what reason are the small stone-colored caryatids under the painted pilasters that separate the cen-
9
tral scenes couples of children of opposite sexes? 11. Why does God flaunt his backside in
the second Genesis scene? 12. What is the meaning of God’s outstretched arm and pointing finger in the Creation of Adam, and who is the nude woman under God’s left arm?
What does the small gap between God’s and Adam’s extended fingers signify? 13. Why is
the tree in the Creation of Eve leafless? 14. In the Sacrifice of Noah, why are these particular animals represented, why does the ox carry a yoke, and why is the donkey smiling so
broadly?
In the course of this article answers will be proposed to all these questions, and
others besides.
The Underlying Ideology of the Sistine Ceiling
©2008 by Elhanan Motzkin
Renaissance Papalism
The ideology informing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is papalism. This is the
10
doctrine that all governmental authority, both within the Church and outside it, derives
ultimately from the Pope. Within the Church the Pope is above the General Council, which
only he can convene, which he may dissolve, and whose decisions require his approbation
to be adopted. Outside the Church the Pope is superior to all the temporal rulers, whose
authority proceeds from him. Those who reject this doctrine are called ‘conciliarists’ if they
hold that a General Council has greater authority than the Pope, and ‘imperialists’ if they
think that the Pope’s authority in temporal affairs is lesser than that of the Emperor. Papalists and anti-papalists argued the merits of their respective positions all through the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, and in this domain the Renaissance continued the Middle
Ages seamlessly.
I must insist upon this last point, since many still have the impression that by the
end of the fifteenth century the papalist-imperialist quarrel had abated, or at least ceased
to be topical, and that the medieval papal claims to universal hegemony had long been
forgotten. We recall then that the medieval power struggle between the papacy and the
temporal Catholic rulers continued imperturbably right up to the Reformation both on the
ground and on the ideological level. As late as 1511 Emperor Maximilian I and the King of
France Louis XII convoked a General Council at Pisa that voted to depose the current
Pope, Julius II. Some publicists defended the legality of the Pisa council (e.g., Zaccaria
Ferreri1) and others condemned it (e.g., Cajetan2), but all used the same scholastic arguments as in the Middle Ages. Julius II riposted in the same way as his medieval predecessors by preparing to depose Louis XII in favor of Henry VIII of England, who was of course
still Catholic.1 Naturally, both Julius II and Louis XII stayed put, also as in the Middle Ages.
To reassert his authority, Julius II convened a General Council of his own, the Fifth
1
In his ‘Apologia sacri Pisani concilii’ of September 27, 1511, reprinted in Melchior Goldast, ‘Monarchia’,
vol. 2, Hanover 1653-63.
2
In ‘Auctoritas papae et concilii sive ecclesiae comparata’ of November 19, 1511 (Rome). English translation in J. H. Burns and Thomas W. Izbicki (ed.), ‘Conciliarism and Papalism’, Cambridge U. P. 1997, pp. 1133.
11
Lateran Council (1512-1517). The Fifth Lateran Council duly condemned the Council of
Pisa. It went further. It reaffirmed the most extreme of the medieval papalist bulls, Boniface VIII’s ‘Unam sanctam’ of Nov. 18, 1302.2 Pope Leo X then reiterated ‘Unam sanctam’
in the bull ‘Pastor æternus’ of Dec. 19, 1516 (i.e., less than a year before Luther nailed his
theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg). ‘Unam sanctam’ asserts that
‘subesse Romano pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, diffinimus et
pronunciamus, omnino esse de necessitate salutis’ (‘We declare, proclaim, define and pronounce to be absolutely necessary for salvation that every human being be subject to the
Roman Pontiff’).3
Extreme papalism then was still the official position of the papacy (and of the
Church) in the early sixteenth century. Official chapels tend to reflect official positions,
and of the various papal chapels, the Sistine Chapel was certainly the most official and
closely identified with the papacy, since it was here that papal elections were held. Julius II
moreover had distinct megalomaniac tendencies: the new St. Peter’s he was erecting was
to be the greatest building in the world, and he planned to have his own gigantic tomb installed in the center of the choir. Under the circumstances it was only to be expected that
Julius’s Sistine ceiling should express a papalist stance.
The Argument of Innocent IV
Many arguments were made in favor of papalism over the centuries. The ones illustrated in the central area of the ceiling are based on Pope Innocent IV’s presentation of the
1
For details of this episode, see Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 19, 1896, p. 425ff.
‘Unam sanctam’ is reproduced as Text 372 in D. Karl Mirbt, ‘Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und
des römischen Katholizismus’, Tübingen 1934, p. 210-11.
3
The translation is that of www.papalencyclicals.net. The decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council can be found,
with a French translation, in G. Alberigo (dir.), ‘Les Conciles œcuméniques: Les Décrets’, Paris 1994, vol. II1, p. 1211-1337.
2
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papalist case. Here is what Innocent IV (d. 1254) had to say:1
Deus creavit in principio cælum et terram, et omnia quæ in eis sunt, Angelicam et humanam naturam, spiritualia et temporalia, ipsaque per seipsum rexit,
sicut factor suam rem gubernat, et homini quem fecit, præcepta dedit, et transgredienti pœnam imposuit, ut Gen. 2: “Ex omni ligno” etc., ipsis etiam peccantibus
imposuit per seipsum, scilicet Adæ et Evæ, Gen. [3]2: Mulieri quoque dixit, etc., et
ibidem: Adæ vero dixit, etc. Qualiter autem Chain per seipsum puniverit, et Lamech, et Cham, et quosdam alios in eodem librum Gen. 4 et 5 legitur, et sic recto
mundo per ipsum Deum usque ad Noè. Ex3 tempore Noè cœpit Deus creaturas suas
regere per ministros, quorum primus fuit Noè. De quod fuit rector populi, ex eo
apparet, quod sibi dominus gubernatorem arcæ, per quam Ecclesia significatur,
commisit, Gen. 5 et 6 cap. Item, quia etiam dominus Noè et filiis rectoriam et legem sibi dedit, Gen. 9. De Noè etiam, sed non legitur sacerdotem fuisse, officium
tamen exercuit sacerdotis statim post egressum arcæ, ante quam leges populo daret, Gen. 8. Aedificavit autem Noè, quod officium sacerdotis simul Abel et Cain
primo fecerant. In hac autem vicaria successerunt Patriarchæ, Iudices, Reges, Sacerdotes, et alii, qui pro tempore fuerunt in regimine populi Iudeorum, et sic duravit usque ad Christum, qui fuit naturalis Dominus et Rex noster, de quo dominus
in psalmis Deus iudic[i]um tuum regi da, etc. Et ipse Christus Iesus vicarium suum
constituit Petrum et successores suos, quando ei dedit claves regni cælorum, et
quando dixit ei, Pasce oves meas.
This may be translated as:
1
Innocent IV, ‘In Quinque Libros Decretalium … Commentaria’, reprinted by Giunta, Venice 1578, Liber 2,
Rubrica 2: ‘De Foro Competenti’, chap. 10, fol. 83, col. 1.
2
The Giunta edition has ‘Gen 19’, but it should be Gen 3, as can be seen by the context. Gen 19 contains a
different episode where God punished wrongdoers directly, Sodom and Gomorrah.
3
The Giunta edition has ‘Et tempore Noè’.
13
In the beginning God created heaven and earth and all things that are in
them, Angelic and human nature, the spiritual and the temporal. And over all these
He ruled by himself, as a maker governs his object. Thus to the man that He made
He gave rules, and on the transgressor He imposed penalties (Gen. 2: ‘Of every
tree,’ etc.). Also on the same guilty [ones] He imposed [penalties] by Himself, that
is, on Adam and Eve, (Gen. [3]: ‘To the woman He said’, etc., and in the same
place: ‘And to Adam He said,’ etc.). Also in that way He punished Cain by Himself,
and Lamech, and Ham, and some others, as we read in the same book of Genesis,
chap. 4 and 5. And so the world [was] ruled by God himself, until Noah. From the
time of Noah God began to rule his creatures through ministers, of whom the first
was Noah. That he was a ruler of the people is seen by that God appointed him to
govern the Ark, by which is meant the Church (Gen. chap. 5 and 6). As well, by that
God gave Noah and his sons the charge of ruling and a law (Gen. 9). Also regarding
Noah, while we do not read that he was a priest, still he exercised the office of
priest immediately after leaving the Ark, before giving laws to the people (Gen. 8).
Noah also built [an altar], which priestly office Abel and Cain first performed concurrently. In these roles as vicars [of God] succeeded Patriarchs, Judges, Kings,
Priests and others who were in governance for a time over the Jewish People. And
so it lasted until Christ, who was by birth our Lord and King, of whom the Lord
[said] in the Psalms,1 ‘God, give to the king your judgment’, etc. And the same
Christ instituted as his vicar Peter and his successors, when he gave him the keys of
the Kingdom of Heaven and when he said to him, ‘Feed my sheep’.
In other words, inventors control and direct their inventions, and God ruled the
universe because He invented it. Having created both the spiritual and the temporal, He
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ruled over both. The implication is that the Pope, as Vicar and successor of God on earth,
similarly rules over both the spiritual and the temporal.
In particular, God ruled over the temporal. To rule over the temporal is to make
laws and enforce them. Laws, by definition, include penalties for lawbreakers, and enforcing the law means punishing the guilty. Before Noah God fulfilled these conditions, because He gave Adam (‘the man he made’) rules containing penalties for lawbreakers and
He personally punished these lawbreakers. So before Noah God ruled directly.
Noah is pivotal because he was the first to rule as vicar of God both over the Church
(the Ark) and over the people. His government was universal (he ruled over all extant humanity) and it was both spiritual and temporal, since Noah acted as priest and he gave
laws to the people. It was only after he acted as priest that he gave laws, so it was really a
priest that enunciated the laws, and he and his sons received the law and the charge of
ruling (‘rectoria’) from God. Between Noah and Christ the vicars of God were the Patriarchs, the Judges, the Kings, the Priests, and other rulers of the Jews. The succession of
the Vicars of God continued until the coming of Christ, who gave to the kings their power
of judging (‘iudicium’), and Christ appointed Peter and his successors as his vicars.
The central area of the ceiling illustrates all this by first showing God regulating the
world at the creation, then God giving Adam and Eve laws and punishing them when they
break them, and finally God’s first vicars, Noah and his sons. For the period between Noah
and Christ the text mentions types of rulers rather than specific figures. The medallions
illustrate these types by characteristic episodes of Jewish history chosen for their papalist
implications. The miraculous survival of the Jews is further illustrated outside the central
area in the corner scenes, the triangles, and the lunettes.
The text of Innocent IV explains why the ceiling begins with the creation, why the
next triad of scenes deals with Adam and Eve, and why Noah is so prominent, with three
whole scenes devoted to his story. The ceiling begins with the creation of heaven and earth
1
Ps 72:1 (Ps 71:2 in the Vulgate).
15
and of everything in them because Innocent IV’s apology begins with these creations, the
Adam and Eve scenes illustrate the next point in the text, God giving them rules, their
breaking them and being punished, and Noah is so important because according to Innocent IV Noah was the original Vicar of God, and thus the first human precursor and prototype of the Pope. The first Vicar of God is so prominent in the Pope’s chapel to underline
that the present Vicar of God is the Pope. Only here is Noah so prominent because only
here is Innocent IV’s argument for papal primacy, in which Noah plays such a vital role,
illustrated. Also by glorifying Noah, who ruled over all humanity, the Pope is claiming that
as his successor he too rules over all humanity.
Moses, on the other hand, is missing both from Innocent IV’s list and on the ceiling. Moses was a ruler of the Jews and both received a law from God and gave laws to the
people, yet Innocent IV does not mention him in his list and instead insists on the role of
Noah. This is because Noah ruled over all of humanity and the Popes claimed to be similarly the (ultimate) rulers of all of humanity. On the ceiling Moses’ complete absence is
striking, since he is absent even in the brazen serpent scene, where his role was central.
This absence is not due to any prejudice against Moses harbored by the Popes responsible
for the Chapel decoration: Sixtus IV’s wall frescoes recount Moses’ life in extravagant detail, and the largest statue carved for Julius II’s tomb was that of Moses. Nevertheless, Moses is absent on the ceiling. The absence of Moses both on the ceiling and on Innocent IV’s
list combined with Noah’s prominence on both tend to confirm that Innocent IV’s list was
indeed being followed in the ceiling decoration.
Once we realize that the basic reason why God, Adam and Noah hog up the central
scenes is that they were the initial predecessors of the Popes (for Adam too was a predecessor of the Popes—see pp. 47-48), many of the ceiling’s peculiarities cease to perplex and
their raisons d’être become clear. The Popes naturally identified themselves with their
forerunners. So whenever God, Adam or Noah does something that seems to us curious,
we should check to see if it may have been in order to justify some papal claim or other by
16
showing that God, Adam or Noah had already verified it. Often this turns out to be indeed
the case.
The four senses
Innocent IV’s text is the basis of the papalist argumentation on the ceiling, but the
ceiling does not stop there. In the Middle Ages it was universally accepted that Biblical
texts contain four levels of meaning: the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogic
(Dante exposes this theory in detail in ‘Convivio’ IV xxiv & xxvi). The papalist assertions of
the ceiling are similarly on four levels. The first point is that the Popes are the successors
of the previous supreme rulers. The second is that papal primacy is entailed by the divine
law. The third is that it follows from the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s1 theory of hierarchy. And fourthly, each element of the ceiling contains at least one direct papalist moral.
The four senses of the ceiling correspond to the four medieval levels of meaning: on the
literal level the ceiling displays the precursors of the Popes, the divine law corresponds to
the allegorical level, the direct papalist morals to the moral message, and Dionysius’ hierarchies to the anagogic sense.2
The papalist argument of the divine law
All parties to the imperialist-papalist struggle, and in particular Innocent IV in the
1
Dionysius the Areopagite is mentioned in Acts 17:34, and texts claiming to be by him enjoyed quasiBiblical authority in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. These writings were apparently the work of a
fifthcentury author, now called the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Valla unmasked the hoax in the early
fifteenth century, but was ignored.
2
Literally ‘anagogic’ means leading upwards, and ‘leading upwards’ is how Pope Boniface VIII characterizes Dionysius’ law of hierarchy in ‘Unam sanctam’: ‘secundum B. Dionysium lex divinitatis est infima per
media in suprema reduci’.
17
above text, where ruling is identified with making laws and punishing lawbreakers, were in
agreement that ‘authority’ in the question, ‘who has ultimate authority on earth?’ meant
legal authority, and that hence the question was, ‘who is the ultimate lawmaker?’ Legal
theory recognized several types of laws: eternal, natural, revealed, etc., and what was
meant here by the term ‘lawmaker’ was the maker of human, or man-made, law.
The greatest of the anti-papalist theorists, Marsilius of Padua, argued that since
law is by definition coercive (i.e., if a law is not coercive it is not a law), the Pope is no legislator because he has no means to punish, and hence no power to coerce. According to
him human law is made by the people ‘or by its better part’. The Emperor represents the
people because he is the successor of the Roman Emperor of antiquity who was in principle elected by acclamation by the people of Rome, and unlike the Pope the Emperor does
wield effective coercive power. It follows that the human legislator is the Emperor and the
other temporal rulers. The Pope then has no legislative authority concerning human law
other than that conceded to him by the Emperor.1
The papalists retorted that the divine law is above human law, i.e., human law is
valid only insofar as it agrees with the divine law.2 The authority of the Pope derives from
the divine law, and the Pope is therefore above the Emperor. Here is Augustinus of Ancona’s formulation of this argument:3
Omnis lex, dummodo iusta sit, … dependet a lege divina. Illo ergo iure lex
imperialis dependet ab auctoritate papae quo iure dependet a lege divina, cuius
ipse papa est vicarius et minister, potissime cum secundum Dionysium lex divini-
1
Marsilius does not say that might makes right. He says that men make human law, and the human species is
represented by the Emperor and not by the Pope. If the Emperor did not represent mankind in some sense his
laws would not be legitimate. However absence of might does constitute evidence of absence of authority:
the fact that the Pope has no policemen to enforce his edicts shows that God did not intend him to rule the
world.
2
In Medieval and Renaissance religious literature the term ‘Divine Law’ sometimes means all law which is
above human law, and sometimes more narrowly the Old Law of Moses and the New Law of Jesus. One has
to judge by context, which of the two meanings is intended.
3
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica 44 i.
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tatis hoc habeat, ut eius influentia non transeat ad inferiores nisi per media. Medius autem inter Deum et populum Christianum est ipse papa. Unde nulla lex populo christiano est danda nisi ipsius papae auctoritate, sicut nec aliqua lex fuit data
populo Israelitico nisi mediante Moyse.
This says that as all just laws depend on the divine law, imperial law depends on
papal authority, which derives from the divine law, because it follows from Dionysius’ law
of hierarchy that the divine law does not flow downward directly but through in-betweens
and hence through the Pope, since the Pope is between God and the Christian people. So,
just as law was not given to the Israelites otherwise than through Moses, no law is to be
given to Christians except with papal authority.
As we shall see, all these points are made in the chapel decoration. The divine law
is illustrated in detail on the walls and on the ceiling, hierarchy is alluded to on the ceiling
by the makeup and structure of the central area, and that the Pope is between God and the
people is recalled in the medallion directly over the Pope’s throne. As for the Law being
given to the Israelites through Moses, that is the subject of the frescoes on the left wall.
To rebut Marsilius, who held that the divine law was not coercive in his sense, since
men break it with impunity and are punished only in the next world, the ceiling and the
walls contain a large number of instances where God punished lawbreakers already here
on earth. God pointedly wreaks his wrath especially on domestic rebels to and external
enemies of the precursors of the Popes and the Church.
The types of divine law
The theory of law is not central to Catholic doctrine, and is hence almost never alluded to in church decorations. Indeed this is one of the reasons the program of the ceiling
19
has proved so hard to decipher. The theologian who treated the theory of law most thoroughly was St. Thomas Aquinas, and after Aquinas the theory of law interested mainly the
participants in the papalist-anti-papalist disputes. On the ceiling certain details show that
whoever drew up the program was well acquainted with the passages on law in the Summa
Theologica (ST Ia-IIae, questions xc et seq.). According to Aquinas, the defining properties
of law are that it is a command made for a purpose, that it is promulgated, and that it is
coercive. In other words, that it has an end, that it is public, and that it is enforced, i.e.,
lawbreakers are punished. Laws may be divine or human.
To illustrate the divine law the frescoes illustrate the types of divine law. The types
of divine law are, in historical order of their promulgation and in descending order of generality, the eternal law, the natural law, the law of fomes or sensuality, and the revealed
divine law. The eternal law is so to speak the blueprint or architect’s plan that God followed when creating the universe. It is fully known only to God and it is in the mind of
God. The natural law is that part of the eternal law which is accessible to man through reason. It includes man’s innate knowledge of good and evil. The natural law was implanted
in Adam at the creation and is common to all men (and women). The law of fomes is concupiscence or sensuality.1 Originally intended for the animals, it is the physical law they
follow when obeying God’s command to multiply; man was subjected to this law after the
fall as punishment for his disobedience. The eternal law is illustrated in the first triad of
scenes, the natural law in the second, and the law of fomes in the third.
The ceiling also refers to the first divine positive law and the law of the sons of Noah. Positive law is law that is laid down explicitly and cannot be deduced through reason
alone. Usually the term is used to mean human law, but there is also a divine positive law,
for example God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
The laws of the sons of Noah were handed down immediately after the Flood; they begin
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and end with the command to be fruitful and multiply. All these divine laws apply to all
humanity and supersede human law.
The systematic illustration of the divine law on the ceiling continues and completes
the illustration on the walls of the two revealed divine laws, the written law and the evangelical law. Since for a law to function it must be promulgated,2 both the ceiling and the
wall frescoes carefully note the promulgation of each law. By definition law is coercive,3
and to show that the divine law is coercive the punishments meted out to lawbreakers are
heavily underlined both on the ceiling and on the walls.
The papalist argument of hierarchy
.
One divine law in particular dominates the others as a basic papalist argument. According to the pseudo-Dionysius a superior and divinely instituted law of hierarchy orders
the chain of authority in the universe, the other laws, and, especially, the immaterial spiritual forces guiding the universe, that is, the angels, whose choirs form ‘the celestial hierarchies’. Each level in the hierarchy draws its authority from the level above it and mediates between it and the level below. The papalists inferred that the authority of the Pope is
therefore either above or below that of the Emperor. It is above because the spiritual is
above the temporal. The spiritual is above the temporal because all authority is from God,
who is wholly spiritual. It follows that all the temporal powers, and in particular the Emperor, are subordinate to the Pope, who is the supreme spiritual authority on earth.
Here is Boniface VIII’s formulation of the argument in the bull ‘Unam sanctam’:
1
Fomes or concupiscence is a law because in Rom 7:23 Paul talks of 'the law in my members warring against
the law of my mind and bringing me to captivity to the law of sin' ('video autem alias legem in membris meis,
repugnantem legi mentis meæ, et captivantem me in lege peccati').
2
‘Unde promulgatio necessaria est ad hoc quod lex habeat suam virtutem’ ST 1-2 xc 4 resp.
3
This is already in Aristotle: ‘Law has coercive force.’ N. Eth. x 9, 1180a 21.
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Oportet autem gladium esse sub gladio, et temporalem auctoritatem spirituali subiici potestati. Nam cum dicat apostolus: ‘Non est potestas nisi a Deo; quae
autem sunt, a Deo ordinata sunt’, non autem ordinata essent, nisi gladius esset sub
gladio, et tamquam inferior reduceretur per alium in suprema. Nam secundum B.
Dionysium lex divinitatis est infima per media in suprema reduci. Non ergo secundum ordinem universi omnia aeque ac immediate, sed infima per media et inferiora per superiora ad ordinem reducuntur. Spiritualem autem et dignitate et nobilitate terrenam quamlibet praecellare potestatem, oportet tanto clarius nos fateri,
quanto spiritualia temporalia antecellunt.
That is:
Of necessity sword is under sword, and the temporal authority subjected to
the spiritual power. For as the Apostle [Paul] says,1 ‘There is no power except from
God, and those that be are ordered by God’. Now they would not be ordered if one
sword were not under the other and like the lower led up through another [level] to
the highest. For according to the Blessed Dionysius, the law of the divine is that the
lowest are led up through intermediates to the highest. Therefore according to the
arrangement of the universe (secundum ordinem universi) all are not on the same
level with no mediation, rather the lowest are led up through intermediates and the
lower [led up] through the higher to form an order (ad ordinem reducuntur). That
the spiritual power is by rank and standing above any earthly power must be all the
more clear to us, [seeing] that spiritual things are above temporal things.
Here Boniface VIII is playing on the three meanings of the verb ‘ordino’: ‘to com-
1
In Rom 13:1
.
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mand’, ‘to arrange’ and ‘to line up’. While what Paul meant by the phrase ‘the powers that
be are ordered by God’ was that rulers govern by divine will, Boniface interprets the phrase
as meaning that all earthly powers are what in mathematics is called well-ordered and in
theology hierarchically ordered, that is, that of any two given rulers one is necessarily
greater than the other. Therefore the Pope is either above or below the Emperor, and he is
above because the spiritual is above the temporal. The spiritual comes before the temporal
because God created the world, i.e., the spiritual created the temporal. Here ‘spiritual’
means immaterial and ‘temporal’ material, but in common usage the two words also mean
‘priestly’ and ‘lay’, so the argument was understood by the papalists to have shown that the
Pope is above the Emperor. So here too the papalist reasoning is semantic. On the ceiling
the law of hierarchy is alluded to by the structure of the central area and by the three series
of coupled pairs of figures: the large, adult pairs of ignudi, the smaller pairs, mostly children and adolescents, behind the prophets and the sibyls, and the smaller yet pairs of infants under the fictive pilasters between the scenes.
The Central Scenes of the Sistine Ceiling
©2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
There are nine scenes in the central area of the Sistine ceiling with stories from
Genesis. The scenes progress more or less chronologically from the altar end to the entrance wall, and so, for a spectator entering the chapel, from bottom to top, which is how
successive episodes were ordered in most medieval and Renaissance murals and painted
glass windows. The surface subjects of the scenes are: 1. The separation of light from dark-
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ness. 2. The creation of the sun, moon and plants. 3. God dividing the waters below from
the waters above. 4. The creation of Adam. 5. The creation of Eve. 6. The original sin and
the expulsion from Eden. 7. The sacrifice of Noah. 8. The Flood. 9. The drunkenness of
Noah. The first triad of scenes deals with the creation of the universe, the second triad
with Adam and Eve, and the third triad with the story of Noah and his sons.
The Structure of the Central Scenes
As we saw in the last chapter, the divine law of hierarchy is a basic argument for
papal supremacy. Globally the nine scenes allude to the law of hierarchy by their structure.
For the pseudo-Dionysius, the paradigmatic hierarchies are those of the choirs of angels,
and the formal arrangement of the central scenes therefore mimics the formal arrangement of the choirs of angels.
According to the pseudo-Dionysius there are nine hierarchically ordered choirs of
angels, with the seraphs on top and simple angels at the bottom. The number of scenes on
the ceiling is similarly nine, and the scenes are similarly in monotone sequence. For there
is an often remarked steady descending motion in the scenes, beginning at the altar end of
the chapel and going to the entrance end—or a steady rising movement, beginning with
the entrance end and going to the altar, as one likes.
Thus in the first scene (the Separation of Light from Darkness) God is in heaven
and he faces and gestures upwards. In the second scene God faces and gestures sideways.
In the third scene God is still in heaven but he faces and gestures downwards. The fourth
scene (the Creation of Adam) takes place further down and the earth appears. God is floating above the earth while Adam lies upon it. In the fifth scene God has come down to earth
and stands on it. In the sixth scene God is absent and Adam and Eve are both on the
ground. The seventh scene is on a lower plane since man has been expelled from and is no
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longer in Paradise; but Noah is standing and pointing upward. In the eighth scene most of
the movement is horizontal. And in the ninth scene Noah is lying down and pointing
downward on the right and looking down and digging downward into the earth on the left.
The other basic property of Dionysius’s nine choirs is that they are divided into
three hierarchies, with each hierarchy containing three choirs. The nine scenes on the ceiling are similarly divided into three groups, with each group containing three scenes. The
first group of three scenes concern God in heaven, the second group takes place in Paradise, and the final three scenes are on earth, so the groups unfold on progressively lower
planes. The structure of the nine central scenes then is the same as that of Dionysius’ celestial hierarchies.
The law of hierarchy orders the other divine laws, and the Eternal Law in the first
triad is above the Natural Law in the second which in turn is above the Law of the Sons of
Noah in the third. The special status of the law of hierarchy on the ceiling accords with
Boniface VIII’s characterization of hierarchy as the law of the divine, ‘lex divinitatis’, rather than a simple divine law, ‘lex divina’, on the same level as the other divine laws.
Besides being alluded to by the three triads of the central scenes, the three hierarchies appear explicitly as series of paired angels. The pairs of adult ignudi represent the
first hierarchy, the pairs of child angels behind the prophets and sibyls the second, and the
pairs of infant putti under the pilasters separating the central scenes the third.
The contents of the nine scenes
The nine scenes refer to the universal divine law of hierarchy by their structure;
their contents illustrate the other universal divine laws. These are the eternal law, the natural law, the first divine positive law, the first law of the sons of Noah, and the law of
fomes. The facets of law considered as basic are the promulgation of the law, the nature of
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the law, and the coerciveness of the law. The scenes also contain specific papalist morals.
We first state what, in our opinion, the legal subtexts of the groups of scenes are
globally. We then go into detail, scene by scene, explicating both the legal content and the
specific papalist moral of the scene.
The first three scenes: the eternal law
The first three scenes allude to the eternal law. The eternal law is referred to both
by the choice of the global subject and by the choice of the individual episodes. Globally
the three scenes recount the creation of the material universe. The creation of the universe
has to do with the eternal law because the eternal law is the law God followed when creating the universe. The eternal law determined the form of the universe and so is, in Aristotelian (and Thomist) terms, the formal cause of the universe. Aquinas says that though the
eternal law is unknowable in itself, it can be perceived in its effects. The universe being in
the Thomist sense the effect of the eternal law, the logical way to illustrate the eternal law
is by depicting the creation of the universe. The first three scenes then depict the creation
of the universe both because Innocent IV begins his apology of papalism with the creation
and because the creation is the material manifestation of the eternal law.
Furthermore the eternal law is illustrated in the first three scenes by the choice of
episodes. The first two scenes illustrate the eternal law by depicting time, which is the purest image of the eternal law in created nature, and the third scene refers to an argument of
Aquinas proving that the eternal law governs the contingencies of nature. The first scene
corresponds to the promulgation of the eternal law; the second scene alludes to its universality, regularity, constancy and coerciveness; and the third illustrates its application to
the material world. We now proceed to show all this.
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The representation of eternal time in the first two scenes
Eternity cannot be represented directly, either (or both) because eternity is infinite
and the world is finite (the Christian reasoning), or because it is an idea and the world is
material (the Platonic reasoning). All we can do is depict its image on earth. This image,
according to Plato, is time. In Timaeus 37 d Plato says: ‘[God] resolved to have a moving
image of eternity … and this image we call time.’1
For Aquinas too, ‘eternal’ means beyond time. But according to Aquinas, while we
cannot know the eternal law, which is above nature, we can judge it by its effects in nature.
If then the image of eternity in nature is time, then given our limited perspective the only
way we can represent eternity is by representing time. Accordingly the first two scenes
represent ‘eternal’ by illustrating time. Innocent IV said that at the beginning God created
‘spiritualia et temporalia’. To illustrate ‘spiritualia’ there is a wind, ‘spiritus’, in first two
scenes, and to illustrate ‘temporalia’ the first two scenes represent time, ‘tempus’.
The image on earth of infinite eternal time is the totality of earthly time, and the totality of earthly time is ‘from the beginning to the end of time’. To represent ‘from the beginning to the end of time’, the ceiling depicts first ‘from the beginning of time’ and then
‘to the end of time’. The first scene on the ceiling, ‘the Separation of Light from Darkness’,
illustrates ‘from the beginning of time’, and the second scene, ‘the Creation of the Sun, the
Moon, and the Plants’ illustrates ‘to the end of time’.
The first scene represents the beginning of time and not the creation of light, as is
often asserted, because it depicts God separating light from darkness with his hands, and
not as saying, ‘Let there be light.’ The creation of light and the separation of light from
darkness were two separate and distinct events. The former is recounted in Gen 1:3 (‘Dix-
1
Translation by Jowett. Timaeus was the one dialogue by Plato continuously available in the West throughout the Middle Ages.
27
itque Deus: Fiat lux’), and the latter only later in Gen 1:4, after God verified that light was
good (‘Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona, et divisit lucem a tenebris’). Now the separation of light from darkness was when time started, or more precisely, when time started to
function actively. This is implied by the next verse: ‘Appelavitque lucem diem et tenebris
noctem’ (Gen. 1:5), and it was the general opinion of the theologians and in particular of
Aquinas.1
The second scene displays the visible signs of the passage of time. These are the
sun, the moon and the plants. The sun marks the year, the moon the months, and the
plants the seasons. The sun and moon also stand for day and night. The seasons are included because in Latin the seasons are called ‘tempora anni’, and Gen 1:14 says: ‘Dixit
autem Deus: fiant luminaria in firmamento cæli, et dividant diem ac noctem, et sint in
signa, et tempora, et dies, et annos.’ This is why the stars, which were created at the same
time as the sun and the moon, are absent: the stars are not perceived as marking the passage of time. The animals are absent for the same reason.
The sun, moon and plants in the second scene correspond to how ‘to the end of
time’ is expressed in Genesis. In Genesis ‘to the end of time’ is ‘Cunctis diebus terrae, sementis et messis, frigus et æstus, æstas et hiems, nox et dies’ (Gen 8:22), i.e.,, ‘all the days
of the earth, sowing and reaping, hot and cold, summer and winter, night and day.’ Sowing, reaping and the seasons correspond to the plants, and the rest to the sun and moon.
The complete verse says that time is restless, since the list of the components of
time ends with the remark, ‘they shall not rest’: ‘Cunctis diebus terrae, sementis et messis,
frigus et æstus, æstas et hiems, nox et dies, non requiescent’ (Gen 8:22). And for Plato the
1
Aquinas differentiates between the creation of formless time, which according to him occurred when God
created heaven and earth in Gen 1:1, and time acquiring form and starting to function actively, which happened when time was distinguished into day and night in Gen 1:4. In ST 1 xlvi 3 resp, Aquinas says concerning Gen 1:1 that ‘Quatuor enim ponuntur simul creata, scilicet cœlum empyrium, materia corporalis, quae
terra intelligitur, tempus, at natura angelica.’ In ST 1 lxvi 4.2 the objection is raised that time did not exist
before the separation of light from darkness, ‘Sed a principio nec nox nec dies erat, sed postmodum cum
divisit Deus lucem a tenebris. Ergo a principio non erat tempus.’ Aquinas’s answer to this objection is, ‘tempus … fuit informe et postmodum formatum et distinctum per diem et noctem.’ (ST 1 lxvi 4 ad 2.)
28
essential property of time and indeed the reason time was chosen by God to be the image
of eternity is that it is constantly moving. In the first two scenes God rushes about energetically to illustrate this constant motion. In the first scene God swirls; in the second he
lunges forwards diagonally on the right and recedes backwards diagonally on the left.
That the second scene illustrates the measures of time explains the curious composition of this scene, and in particular why God appears twice, rushing in towards us from
the right, and rushing out away from us to the left. The measures of time come and go regularly: the sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes, the plants ripen and wilt. In order to bring out and underline this common motion, God himself arrives and departs. He
enters the scene rushing towards us on the right, and leaves it rushing away from us on the
left. Now all the measures of time have positive and negative phases: day and night, full
moon and moonless nights, and summer and winter seasons. To reflect and bring out this
double, complementary and reciprocal property of time, God appears twice, first showing
us his countenance and then his backside.
The four figures surrounding the figure of God in the second scene on the right
have been interpreted, with some plausibility, as representing the times of day. The overgrown baby represents dawn, the woman shading her eyes from the sun noon, the figure
with the turban twilight, and the cadaverous face peeping from behind God, night. They
could equally well be the seasons, the baby being spring, the woman shading herself with
her arm, summer, the turbaned woman autumn and the corpse winter. It is hard to say
which interpretation was intended, perhaps both. The difficulty stems from the fact that
the times of day and the seasons are very similar: there are four times of day and also four
seasons, and the seasons are called ‘tempora anni’, ‘the times of the year’, in Latin. But
whichever is the proper interpretation of the figures by God’s side, the times of day, the
seasons or both, they confirm that the underlying subject of the scene is time, and specifically the measures of time.
The first two scenes representing time explains a famous anomaly in the ceiling. On
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the ceiling the chronological order of events has been tampered with, and the creation of
the sun and moon placed before the separation of the waters. According to Genesis the
creation of the sun and moon occurred on the fourth day and the separation of the waters
on the second, but on the ceiling the creation of the sun and moon is represented in the
second scene, and the separation of the waters in the third. The explanation is that the
ceiling follows the order imposed by the sense of the scenes. The first two scenes form two
parts of a single concept, time, so the scenes had to appear next to each other.
The Promulgation of the Eternal Law
Time represents the eternal law on the ceiling because on the one hand time is the
image of eternity and on the other it possesses the properties of law. Law is, according to
Aquinas, a rule and a measure.1 To show that time is a measure, time is represented on the
ceiling by the measures of time: the sun, the moon, and the plants. These measures are
regular; that is, they follow a rule. The sun, moon and plants thus bear visible witness to
the existence of law.
Specifically, this law is part of the eternal law. For it is independent of human
wishes and is therefore due to God. (This point is illustrated explicitly in the second scene,
where it is God who fixes the place and function of the sun, moon and plants.) Its existence
is visible to all, so it is not a part of the divine law previously hidden and only revealed
through Moses and Jesus. Hence it is part of the eternal law. The sun, moon and plants
thus constitute visible evidence for the existence of the eternal law.
Promulgation is the setting off of the law, and without promulgation the law is
1
‘lex sit regula quaedam et mensura’ ST 1-2 xc 1 ad 1.
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without force.1 Like the other laws, the eternal law was promulgated. Though the promulgation by God of the eternal law was also eternal (i.e., eternally in the past), from the human perspective it cannot be eternal, because the human perspective is inherently limited
and so cannot represent eternity, which is infinite.2 We can only represent the image of
eternity on earth, which is time; and time has a beginning and an end. Time possesses the
properties of law and is the purest product, witness and image of the eternal law in created
nature. The beginning of time corresponds to and is the image of the beginning of the
eternal law, that is, of its promulgation. Since the first scene represents the beginning of
time, it represents the image of the promulgation of the eternal law.
The references to law in the second scene
Besides illustrating time, which has the properties of law, the second scene refers to
law in other ways. One of these references is the image of God pointing on the right. Pointing may mean several things, but here it represents a command, because the expression on
God’s face is stern, concentrated and determined, and his gesture that of command. The
command is to the sun and moon to be the signs of the seasons, the days and the years: ‘et
sint in signa, et tempora et dies et annos’ (Gen 1.14).3 While a command is not always a
law, according to Aquinas law partakes of command. God’s gesture of command on the
right is thus congruent with the theme of law.
In contrast on the left of the scene God is not pointing at the plants but only extending his arm towards them. God is not pointing at the plants because he did not command them to do anything, not even to exist. It was the earth which was commanded to
1
‘[P]romulgatio necessaria est ad hoc quod lex habeat suam virtutem.’ ST 1-2 xc, 4 resp.
‘Promulgatio fit et verbo et scripto; et utroque modo lex æterna habet promulgationem ex parte Dei promulgantis: quia et verbum divinum et scriptura libri vitæ est æterna. Sed ex parte creaturæ audientis aut inspicientis non potest esse promulgatio æterna.’ ST 1-2 xci, 1 ad 2.
3
In Latin ‘tempora’ means both ‘times’ and ‘seasons’, the expression for the seasons being ‘tempora anni’.
2
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bring forth plants: ‘germinet terra herbam’ (Gen 1:11). Nor are the plants instructed to
multiply. They contain seeds, they are ‘virentem et facientem semen’ (ibid.), but they are
not told what to do with them. God did consider that the plants were good in a general
way, ‘et vidit deus quod esset bonum’ (Gen 1:12), and this is what the left side of the scene
represents. On the ceiling an outstretched arm often underlines the act of seeing or looking at.1 According to the Vulgate God saw that the plants were good, and this seeing is
what the outstretched arm illustrates.
A third allusion to law in the second scene is God’s behind on the left. ‘Law’ brings
to mind Moses on Mount Sinai, and on Mount Sinai Moses saw God’s behind.2 In the original Hebrew Moses only saw God’s back, but in Hebrew the word for ‘back’ is in the plural
form when in the possessive, and the Vulgate accordingly translates ‘back’ in the relevant
passage (Ex. 33:23) as ‘posteriora’, in the plural: ‘tollamque manum meam et videbis posteriora mea’. ‘Posteriora’ however means buttocks in Latin, so literally the text says: ‘I will
raise my hand and you shall see my buttocks.’ And that is what we have in the left part of
the second scene, where God’s buttocks are egregiously underlined. God folds his legs and
protrudes his behind towards us, and the drapery covering God’s behind has been folded
back to suggest that the buttocks are bare.1 The bush below God recalls the bush on Sinai.
God also raises his hand, as specified by the verse quoted above. Altogether the left part of
the second scene is clearly meant to put us in mind of Moses on Sinai.
On Sinai God revealed his backside to Moses because Moses wanted visible proof
from God that the law he had just received was from God himself. God’s backside on the
left side of the second scene serves the same purpose. It confirms and completes the argument begun on the right side of the scene, that the regular transformations of the sun,
1
The meaning of Adam’s extended arm in the Creation of Adam is that Adam sees God, and the Jews in the
scene of the Brazen Serpent in the right corner space extend their arms towards the serpent to indicate that
they are looking at it.
2
The reference to Moses’ vision on Sinai was first noticed by E. Dotson, in ‘An Augustinian Interpretation of
the Sistine Ceiling” Part 1, The Art Bulletin LXI, 1979, pp. 223-56.
32
moon and plants reflect the eternal law. In the same way that the plants on the left complete the sun and moon on the right, God’s backside on the left completes God’s gesture of
command on the right by confirming that the command is a law, and that it is a divine law.
A possible, complementary reading of God’s backside is that it refers to punishment. As a rule God appears to you face to face and lets his countenance shine upon you to
express his approval; he turns his back to express his disapproval. This convention is illustrated in the right half of the second scene (see below) by God’s facing the sun and turning
his back on the moon. A law must, by definition, include penalties for lawbreakers, but the
eternal law cannot be broken, and the punishment associated with it cannot be other than
symbolic. God’s disapproval is the symbolic punishment associated with the eternal law.
The nature of light
Light is represented as a luminous cloud in the first scene. Light as we know it is
sunlight, but the sun was not created until the fourth day, while light was created on the
first. What was light like then before the fourth day? On this issue the theologians were
divided. By representing this light as a luminous cloud the ceiling follows not Aquinas but
Peter Lombard: ‘Si vero corporalis fuit lux illa, quod utique probabile est, corpus lucidem
fuisse intelligitur, velut lucida nubes.’ (‘If that light was material, which is probable, it
should be understood as a luminous body, or a luminous cloud.’)1 To represent the original
nal light as a luminous cloud is a technical theological point that shows that a trained theologian must have given Michelangelo instructions even as regards details.
1
At present God’s bottom is literally bare, but if this was the original intention or is due to overzealous cleaning is unclear.
33
A direct papalist moral in the first scene
The first scene is not the creation of heaven and earth (Gen 1:1), nor the original
chaos (Gen 1:2), nor the creation of light (Gen 1:3), but the separation of light from darkness (Gen 1:4). This choice is significant. To separate light from darkness is to distinguish
right from wrong, good from evil, innocence from guilt. In other words, to judge. The Middle Ages recognized this, since Hugh of St. Victor (‘the second Augustine’) said regarding
God dividing light from darkness that ‘Divisit per iudicium’.2 According to Innocent IV’s
defense of papalism, on the one hand the Pope is the successor of God as supreme ruler on
earth, and on the other God told Christ to give to the kings his ‘iudicium’ or power to
judge; which means that the authority of the temporal powers’ derives from Christ and
hence from his Vicar the Pope. By representing in the first scene God exercising his power
of judging, the ceiling thus alludes to the Popes’ claim to be the source of all temporal as
well as all spiritual authority.
A direct papalist moral in the second scene
A common argument put forward by the papalists in the Middle Ages in favor of
the thesis that all governmental authority derives ultimately from the Pope was the argument of the sun and the moon. The argument ran as follows: God placed two lights in the
heavens, the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night (Gen 1:16). Since light is
spiritual and matter temporal, the meaning of this is that God appointed the Pope to rule
the spiritual (i.e., the souls of men), and the temporal rulers to rule the temporal (i.e., their
1
2
Peter Lombard, Sententiae, II, 13, 2.
In the ‘Hexameron’ 1:10. See PL vol. 176, col. 195.
34
bodies). But the status of the two powers is not the same: the soul controls the body and
similarly the moon only reflects the light of the sun and does not emit its own. It follows
that, in the same way that all light originates ultimately from the sun, the authority of the
temporal rulers only reflects the authority of the Pope. Consequently all legal authority
originates ultimately with the Pope.
Pope Innocent III put it like this:
Sicut universitatis conditor Deus duo magna luminaria in firmamento cœli
constituit, luminare majus, ut præesset diei, et luminare minus, ut nocti præesset;
sic ad firmamentum universalis Ecclesiæ, quæ cœli nomine nuncupatur, duas magnas instituit dignitas: maiorem, quæ quasi diebus animabus præesset et minorem,
quæ quasi noctibus præesset corporibus: quæ sunt pontificalis auctoritas et regalis
potestas. Porro sicut luna lumen suum a sole sortitur, quæ re vera minor est illo
quantitate simul et qualitate, situ pariter et effectu: sic regalis potestas ab auctoritate pontificali suæ sortitur dignitatis splendorem; cujus conspectui quanto magis
inhæret, tanto majori lumine decoratur; et quo plus ab ejus elongatur aspectu, eo
plus proficit in splendore.1
That is:
Just as God, the founder of the universe, constituted two great lights in the
firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the
night; so to the firmament of the Universal Church, which is called by the name of
heaven, He instituted two great dignities: the greater, which rules the souls (as if
1
Epistola of 30 Oct. 1198, reproduced as No. 401 in Migne, PL vol. 214, col. 377. The same argument with
slightly different wording was included in Rainer of Pomposa’s first collection of the decretals of Innocent III
(tit. II, par. 4). See Migne, PL vol. 216, col. 1186.
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days), and the lesser, which rules the bodies (as if nights). Which [dignities] are the
pontifical authority and the royal power. Further, just as the light of the moon is
drawn from the sun, which [light] is in truth lesser than that [of the sun] by both
quality and quantity as well as by position and effect; so the royal power draws the
splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority; its aspect is the greater, the
more it is adorned by the greater luminary; and the farther its aspect is from it, the
more its radiance profits it.
The meaning of the last two phrases is that the moon’s appearance and radiance
increase the more light it receives from the sun, and the more the moon’s appearance differs from that of the sun (i.e., the less round it is), the more it needs the sun’s rays. The
implication is that the royal power is only as great as the authority delegated to it by the
Pope, and the greater the public differences between the royal power and the Pope, the
lesser is the king’s authority.
This argument is illustrated on the right of the second scene, where the sun is exalted and the moon belittled. Here God commands the sun to rule the day and the moon to
rule the night. The two however are not equal. God faces the sun and points to it with his
right, positive, arm, while he turns his back on the moon, pointing to it with his left, negative hand. Moreover the turbaned figure on God’s left suggests by her gestures that the
influence exerted by the moon is evil: according to Michelangelo’s student and biographer
Condivi, this figure’s gestures signify that it is protecting itself from the moon’s evil rays.
The sun is central in the scene, while the moon is relegated to the right margin,
where half of it is cut off. The aspect of the moon thus differs from that of the sun. The part
of the moon we see is that reflecting the sun’s light and profiting by its radiance. All this
conforms to Innocent III’s text. The perceived need to have the sun at the center of the
composition may well have been the original reason for having two episodes in this scene.
Altogether then the sun is glorified and the moon disparaged. This differs from and
36
contrasts with the common medieval usage. Normally in medieval representations of the
creation of the sun and the moon, the sun and the moon are of the same size and are accorded equal prominence, and the stars, which according to Genesis were created at the
same time, are also present. The unequal and biased treatment the sun and moon receive
in the second scene and the absence here of the stars suggest that here the sun and moon
were intended to refer to the papalist argument in which the sun represented the Pope and
the moon the temporal rulers.
The third scene: the subordination of nature to the eternal law
The third scene is usually called ‘God separating the waters’, but sometimes also
‘God hovering over the waters’, ‘God blessing the waters’, and even ‘God creating the creatures of the sea’. The underlying reference however seems to be to an argument by Aquinas showing that the eternal law rules nature. To the question: ‘Utrum naturalia contingentia subsint legi æternae’, Aquinas answers yes, and quotes as proof Prov 8:29: ‘Quando
circumdabat mari terminum suum, et legem ponebat aquis, ne transirent finis suos.’1 The
proof then that the contingencies of nature are subjected to the eternal law is that according to Scripture (or more precisely, the Vulgate) God gave a law unto the waters not to
overstep their limits. The first two scenes represented the promulgation of the eternal law
and the visible proof of its existence. The third scene illustrates the scriptural proof that
the eternal law is above nature.
The third scene illustrates this by showing God giving the law to the waters not to
transgress their limits. Since ‘aquis’, ‘to the waters’, is in the plural, the law is given both to
the water above and to the water below, and hence both the water above and the water
below are represented in the third scene. God’s left hand is directed at the water below and
1
ST 1-2 xciii 5 sed contra.
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God’s right hand at the water above, but He is not pointing at them. This is because God is
not ordering the waters to do something but rather to refrain from doing something. The
gestures of his hands are negative, and signify: don’t! The gestures are not angry or reproachful. God is not telling the waters to stop doing anything instantly, only not to do it
in the future. The gestures do not signify (as some have suggested) that God is blessing the
waters, because in the first chapter of Genesis the actions of the second day are famously
the only ones that are not followed by the formula, ‘and God found that it was good.’
The papalist moral of the third scene
As we saw, the third scene shows that the material world obeys the eternal law and
is subordinate to it. The material world is temporal and the eternal law is spiritual, and
this means that the temporal obeys the spiritual and is subordinate to it. That the temporal is subordinate to the spiritual and must obey it is a basic and often repeated papalist
assertion, because it implies that the temporal rulers are subordinate to the Pope and must
therefore follow his orders. The first moral of the third scene then is that the Pope is superior to the secular rulers who should obey him.
More concretely, God is dividing the waters in the same way that He divided light
from darkness in the first scene. We recall that Hugh of St. Victor said that God ‘divisit per
judicium’. Hugh of St. Victor’s gloss relating division to judgment applies equally well
here, and so the scene alludes to God’s—and hence the Pope’s—role as the supreme judge.
And indeed God’s expression and gestures in this scene correspond to those of a judge.
Separating light from darkness is separating truth from falsehood, while separating the
water above from the water below is more political in nature, because it implies deciding
who is above whom.
This concludes the presentation of the eternal law in the first three scenes. The
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eternal law, being the most important law, receives the fullest treatment on the ceiling,
and the three basic aspects of the eternal law—its promulgation, its image on earth, and its
preeminence—are illustrated separately. The detailing of the divine law now continues in
the second triad of scenes with the divine laws imparted to the first humans, to wit the
natural law and the first divine positive law. These three scenes illustrate the next point in
Innocent IV’s text: God giving humanity laws, their breaking them and being punished.
The fourth scene: the promulgation of the natural law
and the universal jurisdiction of the Pope
This scene, one of the best known in all of art, is usually called ‘the Creation of Adam’. Its legal meaning however is the natural law, and its papalist moral the universal jurisdiction of the Pope. The natural law was disclosed to man at the creation of Adam, and
the creation of Adam was the moment of its promulgation. The creation of Adam is thus
closely related to the natural law.
In the fourth scene God, lightly clad and with his sash undone, points at Adam with
his right arm. On the left Adam, lying down and leaning on an elbow, lifts his upper body
and stretches his arm out to God, whom he almost, though not quite, touches. Adam and
God stare at each other intensely. God is sustained and surrounded by angels, who are
many and varied. Below him there is a nude young man seen from behind, God embraces
an alert-looking nude young woman with his left arm, a fat child clings to him on his right,
and He touches another with his left hand. Some of the figures behind him are visibly in
pain. The scene and the figures have been variously interpreted. We will argue that the
scene represents the promulgation of the natural law and that the details illustrate aspects
of the natural law.
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The natural law in the fourth scene
The natural law is that part of the eternal law which is accessible to man through
reason. Man’s reason partakes of divine reason and is man’s closest approach to the divine
outside divine revelation. Because man is endowed with reason and the animals are not,
the natural law concerns only man and not the animals. Natural law contains man’s innate
knowledge of good and evil, and also the command to do good and avoid evil, ‘what to do
and what to avoid doing’. It was imposed on man or rather accorded him at the same time
reason was, when man was created. ‘Primae dicitur lex naturae; et haec nihil aliud est nisi
lumen intellectus insitus nobis a deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.’1
In the fourth scene God is pointing at Adam. Normally in medieval depictions of
the creation of Adam, God either touches Adam, he forms him literally out of clay, or else
he blesses him with a thumb and two fingers. These traditions were abandoned here because for the purposes of the ceiling it was important to have God pointing in this scene.
As we saw in the second scene, pointing accompanied by a concentrated stare often signifies a command. One reason that in the fourth scene God is not touching Adam is that God
had to be shown as giving a command with an outstretched finger.
Condivi, who most often did no more than repeat what Michelangelo had told him,
already stated in the sixteenth century what this command consisted of. Condivi says, ‘Nel
quarto [vano] è la creazione del uomo, dove si vede Iddio, col braccio e colla mano distesa,
dar quasi i precetti ad Adamo di qual che far debbe e non fare.’ That is, ‘In the fourth scene
is the creation of man, where one sees God, his arm and hand extended, as if giving Adam
the rules of what he should do and not do.’ Here Condivi is practically repeating Aquinas’
1
Aquinas, ‘Collationes in decem praeceptis’, Prooemium.
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characterization of the natural law. Here too the ceiling follows Innocent IV’s text, which
says that after creating him God gave Adam laws: ‘homini quem fecit præcepta dedit’. The
law God gave man at the moment if his creation was the natural law, since the revealed
divine laws were transmitted through Moses and Jesus only later. The meaning then of
God’s extended arm and pointing finger is that God is giving Adam the natural law.
A true law is coercive, that is, associated with punishment for law-breakers. To
show that the natural law is a true law, it is associated with punishment in this scene. At
the same time that God is proclaiming the natural law with an outstretched arm, he displays the punishment associated with it by having some of the figures behind him suffering the tortures of the damned. These figures, and in particular the suffering face under
God’s legislating arm, show that the natural law God is promulgating is coercive.
As in the second scene, the law is promulgated by a pointing arm and is accompanied by a prominent backside. In the second scene the pointing arm belonged to one representation of God and the backside to another. Here there is only one figure of God, who
is pointing, and the backside belongs to the angel who is supporting him. The angel and
God couldn’t be closer: the angel sustains God and they touch for the angel’s entire length.
The angel’s backside then has something to do with what God is doing at this particular
juncture, which is handing down the natural law. The backside indicates that the natural
law has, as Aquinas says, a positive and a negative aspect, ‘what to do and what to avoid
doing’, and as in the second scene, the backside confirms, by recalling Moses’ vision on
Sinai, that the subject of the scene is the divine law.
The comparison with Sinai also explains why God is so lightly clad and why his
sash is untied. On Sinai God’s bare backside was meant to indicate that the law given there
was not only a divine command but also a divine revelation. Here too a divine command is
a divine revelation, since the natural law reveals a part of the eternal law. The eternal law
is in the mind of God, and so the natural law reveals a part of the mind of God. To emphasize that by giving man the natural law God is revealing a part of himself, God is very light-
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ly clad in this scene and his long, brightly colored sash is flung open.
The basic papalist moral of the fourth scene
Besides the legal reading, the fourth scene, like the others, has a direct papalist
one, in which God is viewed primarily as a precursor of the Popes. Adam is lying on the
ground to show that he is made of matter. To show that in contrast God is pure spirit, God
is accompanied by a strong wind, ‘spiritus’ in Latin. God is above Adam, so matter is inferior to spirit. Hence the temporal is inferior to the spiritual, and the Emperor to the Pope.
God lays down the law to Adam, that is, to all of humanity. God’s green sash is untied. This alludes to the Pope’s powers ‘to bind and loose’ (Matt 16:19). ‘To bind and loose’
means to forbid and permit, which is what Condivi said God was doing. To forbid and
permit is by definition what the law does, so the sash confirms both that what God is doing
is legislating and that here God is viewed primarily as a proto-Pope. The implied message
is that since the Pope is the Vicar of God and his successor as supreme legislator on earth,
it follows that like God the Pope too lays down the law to all humanity. Adam turns to God
and raises his arm towards Him to signify that all humanity turns to His Vicar the Pope
and acknowledges him as the ultimate legislator and master on earth.
The fourth scene then asserts that the Pope’s jurisdiction is universal and covers all
men and not only Christians. This is a central papalist claim, which, as we shall see below
in the section on Jonah, was of great importance particularly at this juncture.
The woman by God’s side
While extending his right arm towards Adam, God embraces an apparently nude
42
female with his left. Many suggestions have been made regarding the identity of this figure. She has been variously identified as Eve, as Mary, as Divine Wisdom, as the Church,
as Dante’s Beatrice, and even as the Jewish Shekhina (the Divine Presence). The first four
identifications are not independent: Mary is the Second Eve and also represents the
Church, and Divine Wisdom, after having been equated with the Logos in early Christian
times, was later identified with the Virgin.
But why should any of these figures be present at the creation of Adam? Why only
at the creation of Adam and not at the other creations on the ceiling? Why at this particular creation of Adam and not at any of the very numerous other creations of Adam elsewhere? Divine Wisdom, for example, was indeed present at the creation of Adam, but she
was also present at the other creations (Prov 8:27-29). If the woman by God’s side in the
fourth scene is Divine Wisdom, then she should be by his side in the other scenes as well.
And though Divine Wisdom was indeed present at the creation of Adam, she is never, so
far as I know, represented in any of the other depictions of the creation of Adam elswhere.
Similar objections can be raised against the other proposed identifications.
To see who the woman under God’s left arm might be, we should consider two
facts. First, as we saw and as was recognized by Condivi at the time, the fourth scene depicts a specific aspect of the creation of Adam: God commanding Adam to obey the natural
law. And second, here God is viewed first and foremost as a precursor of the Pope. To
identify the woman, we should ask ourselves not if God has a female companion or spouse
but if the Pope does, and if he needs for her to be present when legislating for all humanity
(Adam represents all humanity).
Now God the Father does not have a spouse, but Christ and his Vicar the Pope do.
Their spouse is the Church. That the Church is the bride of Christ is well known, but the
Church was also regularly called the bride of the Roman Pontiff, ‘ecclesia sponsa sua’, in
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papal pronouncements.1 The couple Pope-Church appeared prominently in the old Basilica of St. Peter, just a few meters away from the Sistine Chapel, where a Pope (wearing a
papal tiara) and a female who stood for the Church were represented in the apse. When
the ceiling was painted the demolition of old St. Peter’s had begun but was not yet completed, and what the old apse looked like was common knowledge. Since here God is
viewed primarily as a precursor of the Pope, the woman at his side should be the Church.
This identification is consistent with the subject of the scene being God legislating, since it
is as head of the Church that the Pope legislates.2
Indeed, the woman at God’s side is only the ultimate and most striking example of
the obsessive male-female pairing found everywhere on the ceiling: in the central scenes,
where there are as many representations of Eve as of Adam, in the lunettes and triangles,
where there are as many women as men, among the seers, where there are sibyls as well as
prophets, and in the corner scenes, which celebrate the deeds of two women and two men.
Even the small stone-colored putti under the pilasters come in pairs of a male and a female. If the pairings were intended to allude to the couple Christ-Church, then we would
expect to see the same insistence on the two sexes in other church decorations, since
Christ and the Church form a bridal couple everywhere. But it seems that only on the Sistine ceiling are the pairings so ubiquitous. This peculiarity must then be due to the specific
nature of the Sistine Chapel, and what singularizes the Sistine Chapel and sets it apart is
that it is the quintessential papal church. Moreover prefigurations of the Pope are systematically coupled with prefigurations of the Church on the ceiling: Noah and the Ark stand
for the Pope and the Church, and the medallions are divided equally between the precursors of the Pope and the Church (see the chapter on the medallions below). The male-
1
She is so called in Leo X’s ‘Pastor æternus’ of 1516. See Alberigo, p. 1314, l. 3-4
An alternative interpretation of the woman, less probable but perhaps more attractive intellectually, is that
she represents Reason. This interpretation is possible because Aquinas said that God gave man Reason and
the Natural Law at the same time at his creation, and we can read the fresco to mean that God indicates the
Natural Law with his right arm and embraces Reason with his left. And in fact the woman looks intelligent,
she regards Adam with interest and good will, and a nude Reason is more normal than a nude Church.
2
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female pairings on the ceiling should then be seen as alluding to the couple Pope-Church.
The woman at God’s side is not the Church itself, since the Church is normally represented draped and crowned. She is an ideal precursor of the Church, just as God himself
is not a Pope but a precursor of the Popes. And indeed the woman looks ideal: interested
but detached. God’s arm rests on the woman’s shoulders when pointing at Adam to indicate that the Pope legislates as head of the Church, that the Church is his instrument, and
that he is over the Church. Though Eve and Mary are both types of the Church, there is no
need to suppose that the woman was consciously intended to represent either one.
Adam and God
In the fourth scene Adam is lying on the ground, raising his torso and leaning on
one arm while stretching out the other arm towards God. In all these points he resembles
Adam in the medieval fresco of the creation of Adam in the papal basilica of S. Paolo fuori
le mura in Rome. This fresco was destroyed by fire in 1823, but what it looked like is
known through copies.1 Paul was a co-founder of the papacy together with Peter, and the
decoration in S. Paolo had features in common with the decoration in old St. Peter’s and
with that of the Sistine Chapel. For example, there were parallel series of Popes on the
lateral walls in all three churches. That some compositions on the Sistine ceiling were influenced by the corresponding compositions in S. Paolo is thus not surprising.
Adam is lying on the earth he is made of: ‘Formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem
de limo terrae’ (Gen 2:6). He is lying on the earth to show that he is made of earth. In Hebrew there is a play on words here: in Hebrew the word for man is ‘adam’, and man is
1
The best copies of the destroyed frescoes are those in Barberino Latino 4406 in the Vatican Library. For
reproductions, see Joachim Poeschke, ‘Die Kirche San Francesco in Assisi und ihre Wandmalereien’, Munich 1985, Abb. 28-36.
45
made of earth because the word for earth is ‘adamah’. All this is explained clearly in the
glossaries that were always appended to Latin Bibles in the Renaissance.
Adam is therefore made of matter. God, who is pure spirit, is above him. Adam
looks at God intensely and stretches out his arm towards him. Elsewhere on the ceiling an
outstretched arm is sometimes meant to underline an intense look, for example in the
right corner space, in the Brazen Serpent scene, where the Hebrews were specifically instructed to look at the serpent, and also in the left part of the second ceiling scene, where
God’s outstretched arm expresses his seeing that the plants were good. But in the Brazen
Serpent scene the outstretched arms on the left do more than underline the gazes of the
Jews; they signify the Jews’ faith and obedience. In view of the context, it would seem that
here similarly Adam’s outstretched arm indicates faith and obedience. For here God is
commanding man to follow the natural law. Adam bends his finger in obeisance to the
finger of God to show that he accepts God’s command.
To see what the theological justification for the short distance between God’s finger
and Adam’s hand may have been we recall what St. Paul has to say concerning the creation
of man. St. Paul says that God ‘made all men out of one [i.e., Adam] that they may seek
God, perhaps they may touch and find him, though he be not far from any of us’. The Latin
text runs: ‘Fecit ex uno omne genus hominum … quærere Deum, si forte attrectent eum
aut inveniant, quamvis non longe sit ab unoquoque nostrum’ (Acts 17:26-27). This corresponds to what we see in the fourth scene: Adam, that is man in general, having just been
created, is seeking God, perhaps to touch and find him, while God is not far from any of
us. In fact, God is very close to man at this juncture.
Man could be so close to God at that point because before the fall man was pure,
that is, without sensuality. This lack of sensuality is expressed in this scene by the exceedingly small size of Adam’s male member. ‘Small’ is a relative term, and depends on the
perceptions of the spectator, but here the intentions of the artist are clear, because Adam’s
member is considerably smaller than the other male members depicted on the ceiling.
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The Image of God on Earth
The small gap between Adam and God and their being mirror images of each other
also has a papalist sense. As we saw, the Pope is the successor of God. But he is also the
successor of Adam. According to Alvaro Pelayo (Alvarus Pelagius), the Pope succeeds Adam first because like Adam the Pope is, though in a different sense, the First Man; and
second, just as God formed Adam in his image and semblance, so the Son of God formed
the Pope in his own image and semblance. The Pope is then the image of Christ on earth,
so that he who gazes at the Pope with contemplation and faith also sees Christ: ‘Papa enim
successor est in hoc Adae primi hominis, autonomasticè enim, et typicè formavit Deus
filius ad imaginem suam et similitudinem, Papam Vicarium suum, Gen 1. Vere enim Papa
representat Christum in terris, ut qui videt eum oculo contemplativo, et fideli, videat et
Christum.’1 In the fresco Adam is in fact the mirror image of God on earth: a horizontal
Adam on earth stretches out his left arm toward God, and a horizontal God in heaven
stretches out his right arm toward Adam. Also Adam gazes at God with contemplation and
faith. Adam nearly touching God means then not so much that man is close to God, but
rather that the Pope is; and God’s look of love and trust is directed at the Pope rather than
at man in general. This love is shared by the Pope’s bride (and the subject of ‘De planctu
ecclesiae’), the Church, whom God embraces.
The fifth scene: the promulgation of the first positive law
1
See Alvarus Pelagius, ‘De Planctu Ecclesiae’ (lib. 1, cap. 13), in Biblioteca Maxima Pontificia, ed. Rocaberti, Rome 1698, vol. 3, p. 316. This passage of ‘De Planctu Ecclesiae’ first came out in 1332.
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This scene is usually called ‘the Creation of Eve’, and in outline it does follow the
traditional representations of the creation of Eve. These representations usually have a
leafy tree, a recumbent Adam, Eve rising from his side, and God pulling her out, and here
too we have a tree, a recumbent Adam, Eve rising, and God. But the differences are notable and all the more significant precisely because the main lines of the composition are
traditional. On the ceiling the tree is leafless and the branches are sawn off. Not only does
this clash with what we see elsewhere, it is contrary to Scripture, according to which the
trees in Paradise are ‘pulchrum visu’ (Gen 2:9). God does not pull Eve out or otherwise
touch her but raises his hand. God’s gesture is definitely not one of blessing, as in the corresponding scene in S. Paolo fuori le mura and as Vasari claims. For there is a grim expression on God’s face. Compatible with tradition but still curious is that God is not floating in air, as in the fourth scene, but stands firmly on the ground, and far from revealing
himself, as was the case in ‘the creation of Adam’, here his body is covered by heavy folds
of drapery.
What the scene refers to is the first positive law: God’s command not to eat from or
touch the tree of knowledge. This was the first positive law because, by definition, positive
law is laid down explicitly, and, unlike natural law, it cannot be deduced by reason alone.
The command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge was laid down explicitly, and
it is not part of the natural law, because it cannot be logically deduced from innate
knowledge of the basic principles of good and evil. It is therefore positive (‘positive’ because it is ‘posita’, that is, laid down). The command is law because it is coupled with an
explicitly stated punishment. The punishment is the death penalty: ‘In quocumque die
comederis ex eo, morte morieris’ (Gen 2:19).
In accordance with the rule that law implies punishment, Innocent IV said that after giving Adam a law God imposed a penalty on the transgressor: ‘et transgredienti
pœnam imposuit’. Innocent IV’s proof was that according to Gen 3 God said to the woman
and to the man that they will die if they eat the fruit of the tree: ‘Mulieri quoque dixit etc.,
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et ibidem: Adae vero dixit, etc.’ The woman is mentioned before the man because she was
the first to break the law, and in the fifth scene God solemnly warns Eve of the consequences of her act. His mien is grave, even threatening, and he raises his right hand, not to
greet or to bless, but to warn. He has put on his robes, as human officials do when judging.
Innocent IV said that God imposed penalties on both Eve and Adam and both are present
in this scene, but Eve in particular is threatened with punishment because Eve was the
first to break the law. The guilty party, half-bowing, half-kneeling, her mouth open, her
hair in disarray, pleads for mercy with joined hands. The sawn-off branches and trunk of
the tree indicate the nature of the penalty. It is death.
The tree indicates at the same time what the law is about, the punishment it imposes, and who will be punished. What the law is about is the tree of knowledge, the punishment it imposes is death, and those who will be punished are Adam, Eve, and their descendents. The tree in this scene refers to the tree of knowledge because it is a tree and in
paradise, the sawn-off trunk and branches signify death, and the trunk, the main branch,
and the smaller branches stand for, respectively, Adam, Eve, and their children. Adam’s
upper body is leaning against the trunk to suggest that the trunk is associated with Adam,
and the main branch is drawn parallel to Eve’s body to suggest that the branch is associated with Eve. Visually the relationship between the trunk and the branch is the same as
between Adam and Eve: the branch grows out of the side of the trunk in the same way that
Eve was formed from a bone out of Adam’s side. The short sawn-off branches growing out
of the trunk and the main branch represent their offspring. The death sentence is first announced to Eve on the ceiling because she was the first culprit, but as the tree shows, it
will be applied to all her family.
Allusions to the inferiority of Eve in the fifth scene
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The motif of Eve rising from behind Adam rather than from his side is not unique
to the Sistine Chapel and is intended, here as elsewhere, to underline her inferiority with
respect to Adam. Paul had no doubts about this matter. For him, women are inferior to
men because Eve was inferior to Adam. He exposes his reasoning in his First Epistle to
Timothy. There he asserts that ‘Docere autem mulieri non permitto, neque dominari in
virum, sed esse in silentio. Adam enim primo formatum est, deinde Heva. Et Adam non
est seductus, mulier autem seducta in prævaricatione fuit’ (1 Tim 2:12-14). I.e., women
should not teach nor otherwise exercise authority over men but remain silent, because
Adam was formed first and Eve only afterwards, and it was not Adam who was seduced
[by the serpent] but the woman who was seduced and broke the law assigned to her.1
On the ceiling Eve is of course created after Adam and also takes the apple from the
serpent, but she is not silent in the fifth scene, as she should be according to Paul, since
her mouth is open. Her forehead is low, her hair straggling, and her body is dumpy and
shapeless, whereas Adam in contrast is supremely beautiful and well proportioned. By
emerging from behind Adam, Eve shows that she comes after Adam, in status as well as in
time, or, as Paul would have it, in status because of in time.
The lower status of Eve compared with that of Adam is expressed formally on the
ceiling by having the ‘Creation of Eve’ occupy one of the smaller, narrow scenes while the
‘Creation of Adam’ is in one of the wider ones. Also God in the ‘Creation of Adam’ is floating in air, while God in ‘the Creation of Eve’ is standing on the ground, thus reflecting
Eve’s lower standing and less spiritual character. Indeed the wind—‘spiritus’—
accompanying God’s appearance in the preceding scenes is notably absent here.
The law-theoretical contents of the two scenes also imply that Adam is above Eve.
Both the natural law and the first positive law were communicated first to Adam and only
then also to Eve. However the ceiling associates the higher and more intellectual natural
1
‘praevaricatio’ is a legal term meaning the breaking of a public trust associated with an office.
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law (the fourth scene) with Adam alone, while the positive law (the fifth scene), which is
lower in rank and is furthermore portrayed from the punitive perspective, is linked to Eve.
The papalist moral of the fifth scene
The Church Fathers saw in the water and blood that came out of the wound in
Christ’s side at the Crucifixion symbols of the two main sacraments of the Church, baptism
and the Eucharist, and hence a reference to the Church. They said that just as Eve was
born out of a wound in Adam’s side, so the Church was born of a wound in the side of
Christ, who is the New Adam. In the fifth scene God is warning Eve to be obedient. Since
Eve being born from Adam’s side represents the Church, and God is the precursor of the
Pope as ruler and legislator, what God’s stern features and warning gesture signify in this
scene is that the Church should be obedient to the Pope. For her part, the Church kneels
obediently before the Pope and pays homage to him.
The water in the background of the fifth scene
Thomist philosophy divided creation into two steps: potentiality and act. Thus the
earth was created potentially in Gen 1:1 (‘In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram’) but it
actually appeared only when the waters were gathered together and separated from the
earth in Gen 1:9. Creation is often actualized through separation.
The creation of woman is an example of this creation in two steps. Man was created
in Chapter 1 of Genesis both ‘male and female’: ‘Et creavit Deus hominem … masculum et
feminam creavit eos’ (Gen 1:27). Woman was thus already created in Chapter 1. This creation however was only potential, and the creation of woman became an actuality only
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when woman was separated from man in Chapter 2. This separation is the subject of the
fifth scene.
In the background the water behind the dry land recalls another occasion when
creation was actualized by separation: when the waters below were separated from dry
land. The waters below are the complement and opposite of dry land in the same way that
woman is the complement and opposite of man, and the water in the background behind
the dry land recalls that opposition and complementarity. In the fifth scene Eve does not
emerge from Adam’s body, as is most often the case elsewhere, but appears already detached and separate. Woman is separate from man in the foreground in the same way that
water is separate from land in the background.
The sixth scene: the coerciveness of the first divine positive law
The usual title of the sixth scene is ‘The original sin and the expulsion from Paradise’. Its legal meaning is the coerciveness of the first positive law. The scene illustrates
humanity—Adam and Eve were all of humanity at this point—flouting the law on the left of
the tree, and being punished for this on the right.
Including the two episodes in one scene and placing the tree of knowledge between
them was fairly common procedure, as was having the serpent’s body coiled around the
trunk of the tree. What is not common is that Eve is lying on the ground while Adam
bends forward over her, holding a branch with one hand and touching a fruit with the other. This is a radical modification of the usual iconography, in which Adam and Eve stand
side by side and Adam passively receives the fruit from Eve.
The changes here were induced by the same motives that induced the modifica-
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tions to the traditional iconography in the preceding scenes. As in fourth and fifth scenes,
future punishment is anticipated and incorporated into the allusion to the law and/or the
crime. The coerciveness of the divine law is thus underlined.
Part of Eve’s punishment is ‘sub viri potestate eris, et ipse dominabitur tui’ (Gen
3:16). That is, ‘you shall be under man’s power, and he shall dominate you’. Eve is consequently under Adam, who dominates her. Part of Adam’s punishment is, ‘spinas et tribulos
germinabit tibi [terra]’ (Gen 3:18), that is, ‘[the earth] shall bring forth thorns and thistles
to you’, and ‘maledicta terra in opere tuo’ (Gen 3:17). This explains the stunted lifeless
plant emerging from a rock behind Eve.
The scene illustrates two other points. The first is that the nature of original sin
was concupiscence (St. Augustine), and the second that while Eve was guiltier than Adam,
Adam and Eve were both guilty and both deserved to be punished.
Concupiscence is illustrated first by the alluring appearance of a classically beautiful Eve, who is lying down seductively on the ground. By lying on the ground she brings to
mind the earthly love mentioned by Plato in Symposium. Her beauty is all the more striking compared to what she looked like in the preceding scene. Adam is hunkering down
over her, quite unnecessarily from the compositional point of view, since he has lots of
empty space behind him. To show that Eve has succeeded in arousing his lower nature
which is now in the ascendant, he is squat and rustic looking, and much uglier than in the
previous scene. As the comparison with that scene shows, both the ugliness of Adam and
the beauty of Eve are intentional here and hence meaningful. What they allude to is the
nature of the original sin: concupiscence.
Concupiscence also accords with another detail. In a remarkable departure both
from iconographical tradition and the text of the Bible, Adam is touching a fruit of the tree
at the same time that Eve accepts the fruit offered her by the serpent. In the Bible Adam
touched the fruit of the tree only after Eve. Adam’s gesture underlines the necessarily simultaneous nature of the Original Sin, which is realized by both parties simultaneously.
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Still another detail alludes to concupiscence. The other participant in the drama is
the serpent, and as with Adam and Eve the serpent’s traditional appearance is modified to
bring out the sexual content of Original Sin. The serpent, who is female (as is often the
case elsewhere) has here two thick tails (which does not occur elsewhere), and the two
appendices squeeze the trunk of the tree between them, in an obvious sexual reference.
The second point insisted on by the ceiling is that while Eve was guiltier than Adam, Adam was guilty too and so deserved to be punished as well. In his defense of papalism Innocent IV emphasized that Adam and Eve were both guilty and that God punished
both: ‘transgredienti poenam imposuit…ipsis etiam peccantibus imposuit…scilicet Adae et
Evae’. So here too the ceiling follows Innocent IV’s text.
To show that Eve was guiltier, Eve turns to the devil and stretches her arm up to
her in the same way that Adam does toward God in the Creation of Adam. Adam’s look
and gesture signified faith in and obedience to God. Eve’s look and gesture similarly signify faith in and obedience to the devil. Her greater guilt is expressed by the fact that only
she turns to the devil. For the parallelism and contrast with Adam in the Creation of Adam
to be clear, she is lying down like him on the ground.
To show that Adam too is guilty, Adam seizes a branch of the tree with one hand
and a fruit with the other. For Adam and Eve were not only forbidden to eat of the fruit of
the tree but also to touch it: ‘de fructu vero ligni, quod est in medio paradisi, præcepit
nobis Deus ne comederemus et ne tangeremus illud’, says Eve to the serpent in Gen 3:3.
Here there is a small problem concerning what exactly Adam and Eve were instructed not to touch. In Hebrew as in English and Italian it is not clear if Adam and Eve
were forbidden to touch the fruit or the tree, because in all three languages the word ‘it’ in
the verse above may refer to either the fruit or the tree. The situation in Latin is more
complicated. In Latin ‘lignum’ is neuter and ‘fructus’ is masculine, and so it might seem
that ‘illud’ in ‘ne comederemus et ne tangeremus illud’ should refer to ‘lignum’. But in fact
‘illud’ can also refer to the clause ‘de fructu’, ‘of the fruit’. So the ambiguity exists in the
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Latin text as well.
This linguistic ambiguity had a pictorial consequence. To make sure he’s disobeying the law, Adam stretches out both his hands so as to touch both the fruit and the tree.1
To the right of the tree Adam and Eve are being expelled from Paradise. Though
they were expelled almost immediately after having sinned—the same day in fact—they
have aged considerably. In Paradise there was no death and both were eternally young. By
sinning they brought death into the world. Their being shown as much older to the right of
the tree is a reference to their mortality outside paradise. Their unscriptural nudity has the
same meaning it had to the left of the tree: concupiscence.-
The papalist message of the sixth scene
As we saw in the discussion of the fourth scene, the Pope is a successor of Adam as
well as of God. On the other hand, Eve represents the Church, and in fact Eve is the spouse
of Adam just as the Church is the spouse of the Pope. In the sixth scene Adam dominates
Eve, who is under his power, to show that likewise the Pope dominates the Church, which
is under his power. This papalist moral explains why the traditional iconography of Adam
and Eve, which has Adam and Eve standing up and on the same level, was so radically
modified here.
The sixth scene concludes the presentation of the laws imparted to Adam and Eve
in Eden. The next three scenes treat legal developments associated with Noah: the law of
the children of Noah, the historical proof of the coerciveness of the natural law by the
Flood, and the relationship between both and the law of fomes.
1
This answers Wölfflin’s query concerning the significance of Adam’s gesture. Though not usually much
interested in iconography, Wölfflin found the gesture sufficiently puzzling to merit a comment: ‘Seine
Bewegung ist nicht recht verständlich.’ (H. Wölfflin, Die Klassische Kunst, 5th edition, Munich 1912, p. 58.)
55
The third triad: the story of Noah and his sons
The third triad of scenes is consecrated to the story of Noah and his sons. This story occupies such a disproportionate amount of space on the ceiling because, according to
Innocent IV, Noah and his sons were the first vicars of God and thus the first human predecessors and precursors of the Popes. Innocent IV mentions the sons of Noah together
with Noah, and consequently on the ceiling Noah is shown together with his sons. Noah
appears in the seventh and ninth scenes, and in both cases his sons are present.
Their presence also reflects the legal meaning of the scenes and has a papalist moral. The story of Noah contains the divine law promulgated after the Flood known as the
law of the sons of Noah, the illustration of which of course necessitates their participation.
The story of Noah also corresponds to the law of fomes in Aquinas’s list of the types of divine laws, and this law involves Noah’s sons. Finally Noah’s sons and their wives represent
all of humanity, and their presence is so insistent to indicate that the laws of the sons of
Noah were imposed on all without exception. The papalist implication of this universality
is that, like his predecessors God and Noah, the Pope legislates for all humanity.
The general contours of scenes 7 and 9 were influenced by Uccello’s renderings of
the same episodes of the life of Noah in the Chiostro Verde of S. Maria Novella in Florence,
but the details were modified in keeping with their new content. Precisely how this was
done is explained in the following sections below.
The story of Noah includes the Flood, which is illustrated in the largest and widest
scene in the third triad, no. 8. Like the two other scenes of this triad (nos. 7 and 9), the
Flood has to do with the law of fomes. So altogether the last three scenes correspond to the
law of fomes in Aquinas’s list.
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The seventh scene: the laws of the sons of Noah
The surface subject of the seventh scene is the sacrifice of Noah after the Flood.
The presence of this episode at this spot poses several problems. First, the episode is out of
sequence, since the sacrifice occurred after the Flood, and the Flood is illustrated only in
the next (eighth) scene.
And second, the sacrifice of Noah is a fairly minor event from the point of view of
Christian apologetics. The scene we would expect at this point, were the program Christological, would be rather the story of Abel and Cain, since Abel is a well-known type of
Christ. Also the sacrifice of Abel was the first ceremonial sacrifice, so if the intention had
been to glorify the priesthood in general we would again expect here a depiction of the
sactifice of Abel. Indeed this was also the expectation at the time, so much so that Condivi
states, incorrectly, that the scene illustrates the sacrifice of Abel. That it represents the
much less obvious sacrifice of Noah is therefore significant and calls for an explanation.
Even supposing the program obliged the painter to stick to the story of Noah in the
last three scenes, there are other episodes in that story one could have chosen for the seventh scene, for example the building of the Ark or the procession of the animals entering
it. These episodes were just as commonly represented in church decorations as the sacrifice of Noah, and they are all more colorful and animated. Since they occurred before the
Flood, they also have the advantage of allowing the scenes on the ceiling to proceed in
chronological order. In spite of all this, the ceiling program preferred to represent the sacrifice of Noah in the seventh scene. Again we are forced to the conclusion that there is
something here to be explained.
The explanation is supplied by Innocent IV’s text on the one hand and by the legal
meaning on the other. Innocent IV insisted heavily that Noah offered a sacrifice immediately after leaving the Ark. For him the sacrifice was of cardinal importance, because it
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showed that not only was Noah a universal ruler but also to some extent a priest. In a program whose point was to illustrate Innocent IV’s text ‘proving’ papal primacy, to include a
represention of the sacrifice of Noah was thus imperative.
As regards the legal-historical meaning, the first laws promulgated after the expulsion from Paradise and the last laws enjoining all humanity are the laws known as the laws
of the sons of Noah; and these were given by God precisely on the occasion of the sacrifice
of Noah (Gen 9:1-7).
Innocent IV said that Noah acted as a priest after leaving the ark, and Noah is
flanked by two women to underline that in offering a sacrifice he is acting as a priest.
When performing the ceremony of the Mass (which is theoretically a sacrifice) priests are
flanked by two acolytes who are normally altar boys, but who can be adults. When leaving
the ark Noah’s family did not include boys of the requisite age, and women rather than
men replace the altar boys here because it was important for the sense of the scene that
Noah’s sons should be in the foreground.
Being in the foreground, the sons of Noah are larger than their father and more
prominent than he. The difference in the magnitude of the figures is consistent with the
scene’s alluding to the laws of the sons of Noah. For the prominence of the sons compared
to Noah would be strange if the intention was exclusively to illustrate the sacrifice of Noah,
but it is unavoidable if one of the points of the scene is the concomitant laws of the sons of
Noah.
The most important command to the Children of Noah, repeated at the beginning
and at the end of the list of laws, is to be fruitful and multiply. ‘Crescite et multiplicamini’
(Gen 9:1 & 9:7). This injunction poses a problem, because in order to obey it one has to
experience concupiscence, which is a sin. How is this possible? Aquinas’s solution to this
dilemma is to remark that concupiscence or fomes while a sin for man is the law of the
animals and is in consequence natural and good for them. It was not originally made for
man, and that is why by submitting himself to it man disobeyed God and sinned. As pun-
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ishment for disobeying his own law, man was subjected to the law of the animals (to
fomes) when reproducing. So while the end, reproduction, is an order, the means, fomes,
is a humiliation. It follows that there is sensuality and sensuality. When the end is reproduction, the means, sensuality, is necessary; when the end is not reproduction but animal
pleasure, sensuality is a reenactment of original sin.
Aquinas says that the law God intended man to follow is that of reason.1 When man
accepts sensuality and distances himself from reason he becomes like the beasts. To illustrate this theory the seventh scene presents a group of animals on the left. Now we expect
to see animals in the story of Noah, and in particular Uccello’s representation of the sacrifice of Noah in the Chiostro Verde has animals in it (or at least had—the fresco is in terrible condition and we have to rely on old reproductions). But Uccello’s animals are different from the ones on the ceiling. For example, Uccello’s fresco contains birds while the
scene in the chapel does not. In the chapel we have only a horse, a donkey or mule, and an
ox, that is, the yoke-bearing animals. This choice of animals is significant.
For Aquinas relates the yoke-bearing animals to the law of fomes. In his discussion
of fomes in ST 1-2 xci 6, he backs his analysis by a quote from Psalms 48:21: ‘Homo, cum
in honore esset, non intellexit, comparatus est jumentis insipientibus, et similis factus est
illis.’ Which can be translated as: ‘When man, though so honored, has no understanding,
he resembles mindless beasts, and is made to be like them.’ This quote explains why the
scene contains precisely the yoke-bearing animals and no others. For the Latin word used
here for ‘beasts’ is not the Latin for beasts in general but rather jumenta, which means
‘yoke-bearing beasts’1. On the ceiling, to make it absolutely clear that the intention is to
depict specifically the yoke-bearing animals the ox is represented with a yoke.
The yoke-bearing beasts in this scene then stand for mindlessness, which may
seem unsurprising, but in particular the three farm animals symbolize sexuality in this
1
Est ergo hominis lex, quam sortitur ex ordinatione divina secundum propriam conditionem, ut secundum
rationem operetur. (ST 1-2 xci 6 resp.)
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context, which is more curious. Of the three beasts the one most commonly associated
with sexuality is the donkey. Here the donkey, its eyes shut, raises its head and smiles
broadly. It appears to be in the throes of sexual ecstasy. The broad smile illustrates the
sensual animal pleasure that accompanies fomes, and the closed eyes indicate the suppression of reason that goes with it. The form of the animal’s raised head, with the lips
folded back and the teeth thrust forward suggests the state of male excitation.
The three animals thus refer to animal fomes, and the point of their presence is to
show that it is the law of the animals. Corresponding to the three animals on the left are
the three sons of Noah on the right. The sons of Noah illustrate fomes as it affects man
because obeying the first law of the sons of Noah necessitates the usage of fomes.
The literal meaning of ‘fomes’ is ‘combustible material’. On the ceiling both the literal meaning of fomes and its connection with the sons of Noah are illustrated. First, all
three sons are associated with combustible material. Thus the standing son on the right is
carrying the classical combustible material, firewood.
Next, the kneeling son gazes at the altar fire through a square opening in the altar,
where the flames perceived through the opening neatly frame his head. The seat of reason
is the head, and the flames are fomes being consumed, so the head surrounded by fire suggests reason menaced by fomes. The head gazing at the fomes burning is seen from the
back, which may be interpreted to mean that when consciousness turns to occupy itself
with fomes, reason is shut off.
The third son’s wife hands him a shapeless substance. She places her hands in his;
the substance they hold is shared by both. The sense of this action is hinted at by its taking
place directly over the flames perceived through the square opening in the altar. The substance they bear is meant to feed the fire and is thus a fomes. The meaning of the gesture
is that for the fulfillment of the principal law of the children of Noah, procreation, fomes is
1
The initial ‘ju’ in ‘jumenta’ stands for ‘jugum’, which signifies the cognate word yoke.
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provoked in man by woman and is shared by both. The sexual implications of the shared
gesture are made explicit by the son’s posture mounted over the animal, whose wound is
shaped like a vagina. We note that this son is the only one of the three to display his sexual
parts in this scene, his brothers’ genitalia being concealed (the figure on the left is not a
son—see below). The couple’s shared gesture is at the exact center of the composition; this
corresponds to its central importance for the meaning of the scene.
Sexual love’s essential role in fulfilling the command to multiply is also illustrated
by the young woman on Noah’s right. Noah’s wife on his left is too old to arouse desire,
and besides it is to the sons of Noah and their wives that the law of the sons of Noah is
addressed. Hence it is a daughter-in-law on his right who lights the fire of fomes—which
she does with a torch, a torch being a normal symbol of love in the Renaissance.
God is absent in this scene. In Uccello’s Sacrifice of Noah God is present, so his absence here is deliberate and hence significant. The theological reason for this absence is
that while the first law of the sons of Noah is indeed God-given, the law of fomes from
which it is inseparable is a sin and a punishment; and according to Aquinas sin implies the
absence of God. God’s absence in this scene is thus due to the fact that it deals with fomes.
God’s absence in the seventh scene also fits the papalist interpretation. According
to Innocent IV, the immediate successor of God as supreme ruler on earth was Noah. In
depictions of a series of rulers the rulers normally appear separately. One reason God is
absent in the seventh scene is to show that Noah replaced him as supreme ruler on earth.
We conclude with a technical remark concerning the distribution of males and females in this scene. Noah had a wife, three sons and three daughters-in-law, but what we
see in this scene is apparently four young men and only two young women. It seems clear
that one of the young men is or was a woman. One possibility is that one of the men whose
sex is concealed is in fact a woman. Thus Steinmann1 and Thode thought that the figure on
the extreme right carrying a bundle of wood is female, in spite of the figure’s masculine
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haircut and appearance.
It is also possible that one of the two figures with a visible male member was
wrongly restored, and was originally a woman. This is possible because in the sixteenth
century a large patch of the fresco, which included the youth on the left, fell off and was
repainted in 1568 by Domenico Carnevali. Now the prevailing opinion at the time was that
the scene represents the sacrifice of Abel. That is what Condivi said in 1555 in his life of
Michelangelo, and Vasari said the same thing in the second edition of his Lives,2 which
appeared in 1568. This identification was always improbable, because in earlier representations of the sacrifices of Abel and Cain, Abel and Cain are alone, while here there are
other people about. But clearly the identification was possible, because Condivi and Vasari
were not bothered by this objection. Now unlike the number and sex of the people present
at the sacrifice of Noah, the number and sex of those present at the sacrifice of Abel are
unspecified in the Bible. Carnevali may therefore not have realized that the figure on the
left should be a woman, and restored it as a man.
The eighth scene: the coerciveness of the natural law
The eighth scene depicts the Flood. The Flood is shown out of chronological sequence on the ceiling, after the sacrifice of Noah rather than before. The Flood and the
sacrifice of Noah were switched so that the Flood could occupy one of the bigger scenes on
the ceiling. One reason for the switch is artistic: to give the Flood, which is more dramatic
and interesting than the sacrifice of Noah, more room to evolve in. But the Flood is also
extremely important from the legal point of view.
The Flood was the greatest punishment inflicted by God on man for his misdeeds
1
2
Ernst Steinmann, ‘Die Sixtinische Kapelle’, v. 2, Munich 1905, p. 312.
In the first edition of 1550 he had identified it correctly as the sacrifice of Noah.
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in all of history. It constitutes the most obvious and crushing refutation to Marsilius. For
Marsilius does not deny that God punishes evildoers after their death, or that the Pope can
influence God in this matter. His argument is that the Pope has no coercive power (power
to punish lawbreakers) on earth, because God himself does not exercise this power. How
much the more so his vicar. I.e., if God chooses not to exercise his power to punish lawbreakers on earth, then the Pope, whose only force is his influence over God’s actions, is
certainly unable to do so. The ceiling’s answer to this argument is that the Flood is the ultimate proof that, to the contrary, God does intervene in history to apply his rules and
punish wrongdoers. The Flood disproves conclusively Marsilius’s contention that the divine law is not coercive on earth. The Flood occupies one of the larger scenes on the ceiling
and for it to do so the chronological order of the presentation had to be tampered with. It
was clearly important to the papalists that Marsilius be decisively refuted, and that the
refutation should be as prominent as possible.
Since the Flood occurred before the revelation of the written law on Sinai, the divine law broken by the contemporaries of Noah was the natural law. So after having shown
in the sixth scene (the temptation and fall) that the divine positive law was coercive, the
ceiling now shows that the natural law is coercive.
The natural law is known through reason, and to reject reason is to reject the natural law. One way of rejecting reason is to espouse fomes needlessly. To show that the Flood
is related to fomes, the eighth scene includes two significant details: the donkey on the
extreme left and the barrel in the middle. The donkey and the barrel represent fomes or
sensuality, because they stand for sex and drunkenness.
The dove we perceive in the hatch of the Ark and the donkey on the left of the scene
are the only animals depicted in the eighth scene. The dove is a symbol of purity. The donkey in contrast, as we have seen in discussion of the previous scene, symbolizes animal
sexuality. No other animals are present, either among the drowned in the Flood or among
the saved in the ark, which shows that the dichotomy is deliberate, since the Bible goes to
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some pains to mention the drowning of most of the animals in the Flood and the saving of
one pair per species in the ark.
It follows that the implicit meaning of the scene concerns only man and not any of
the other animals. The dove in the hatch of the ark suggests that Noah inside the ark is
innocent, while the donkey outside the ark indicates what the generation of Noah outside
the ark was guilty of. The donkey stands for fomes and indicates that one of the reasons
the generation of Noah was punished was excess of sexual sensuality. Sexual sensuality is
the law of the beasts, and by submitting themselves unreasonably to it the generation of
Noah turned their back on their humanity.
The same point is made by the barrel on the right of the composition, which is a
barrel of wine and stands for sensual pleasure through drink. The abuse of drink leads to
the loss of rationality, which is the defining attribute of man. So the barrel indicates that
by rejecting rationality the generation of Noah betrayed their humanity. Since reason is at
the base of the natural law, the generation of Noah refused the natural law. Like reason,
the natural law is innate in man, and is given him together with life. Having rejected reason and the natural law, the contemporaries of Noah had life withdrawn from them.
The implied papalist moral of the eighth scene
In the bull ‘Eger cui levia’,1 Innocent IV says: ‘…temporalis regimine potestate, que
procul dubio extra ecclesiam efferi non potest, cum foris, ubi omnia edificant ad gehennam, a deo nulla sit ordinata potestas’. I.e., ‘beyond doubt the power of temporal rule cannot be borne away from the Church, because outside [the Church], where all build to Gehenna, no power may be ordered of God’. Now, as is well known (and is mentioned in In-
1
The bull ‘Eger cui levia’ is reproduced in Eduard Winkelmann (ed.), ‘Acta imperii inedita, saeculi XIII et
XIV’, Innsbruck 1885, v. 2, text no.1035, p. 696-703. The quote is on p. 698, lines 10-13.
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nocent IV’s Commentaries—see above), Noah’s Ark stands for the Church. The eighth scene depicts both the Ark and the Flood outside the Ark; that is, both the Church and the
Gehenna outside the Church; and it insists that outside the Church all go to Gehenna.
God and Noah decided who should be saved inside the Ark and who should drown
outside it. The Popes, who are the successors both of God and of Noah, similarly decide
who should be ejected from the Church and put outside it. It follows that the Pope decides
who should be a temporal ruler and who should not, since ‘temporal rule cannot be borne
away from the Church’. And in fact, this was precisely the reasoning of ‘Eger cui levia’,
which was Innocent IV’s bull deposing the Emperor Frederick II, certainly the most spectacular instance of a Pope exercising his jurisdictional overlordship in the temporal domain (Henry IV was only threatened with deposition). First Innocent IV excommunicated
Frederick II and put him outside the Church, and then he deposed him for being outside
the Church and so unfit to rule. An implied papalist moral then of the eighth scene is that
the Pope can remove temporal rulers.
The ninth scene: the punishment of the law of fomes
The ninth scene represents the drunkenness of Noah. The legal significance of the
ninth scene is that it illustrates the punishment aspect of the law of fomes. The elements of
fomes are sensuality, loss of rationality, a reference to sex, and humiliation. For man to be
subjected to the law of fomes is a humiliation, because the law of fomes is the law of the
animals; and this humiliation is the punishment aspect of fomes. In the Drunkenness of
Noah all the elements of fomes are united. Here Noah loses consciousness (rationality)
through wine (sensuality); he displays his sex (sensuality), and is humiliated by Ham. To
indicate his total abasement Noah points down to the ground. The action of the scene thus
corresponds to the punishment of fomes.
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The ninth scene contains two episodes, both having to do with Noah’s seed. On the
left Noah, clothed and standing up, plants a seed. The text in the Vulgate reads: ‘Cœpitque
Noe vir agricola exercere terram et plantavit vineam’ (Gen 9:20). Nothing in the scene
however indicates that the seed Noah is planting is of a vine. He is just shown digging, and
the emphasis is on the fact that he was a farmer working the land. In the seventh scene it
was similarly farm animals that are represented. The reference there was to sex and reproduction, and this seems also to be the case here.
In the center and on the right parts of the scene, Noah is lying down, dead drunk
and exposing his sex. He is surrounded by a vat of wine, a pitcher of wine and a drinking
bowl. The implication is that just as wine leads to drunkenness and loss of consciousness
(that is, of rationality), in the same way the male sex procures animal pleasure and withdrawal from rationality. As in the scene of the Flood, here too fomes or sensuality is represented by wine and to sex. But while in the scene of the Flood sex was alluded to discreetly
through the donkey, here it is indicated explicitly through the male sexual organ.
On the right Noah’s three sons, his figurative seed, also naked, indicate that sex is
indispensable for fulfilling the first and most important of the Laws of the Sons of Noah,
which is to procreate. This they do by flaunting their sexes—one of the sons, seen otherwise from the back, even turns his torso towards us so that we should not miss seeing his
member. The sons themselves are the result of sex, and their sexes are the means by which
their offspring will in their turn be produced. Clearly, that the sons of Noah should refer to
procreation and fomes in this scene was considered indispensable, because their being
naked themselves makes hash of the story they are supposed to be illustrating, their horror
(and in the case of Ham, nasty joy) at seeing their father naked.1
As in the preceding scene, damage to the fresco has caused some confusion about
1
Edgar Wind’s explaination for the sons’ nudity was that by classical standards nudity was shocking in older
men but not in youths. In fact total nudity at all ages was acceptable in mythological scenes (e.g., in Antonio
Lombardo’s ‘Forge of Vulcan’ of 1508-16 in the Hermitage) but less so in Biblical ones: the only nudes in
the corner scenes are the dead, and all the Ancestors are clothed.
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what exactly is going on, and the restoration has not helped matters. In the Bible, two sons
looked away and tried to cover their father’s nakedness, while Ham stared at it and encouraged his brothers to do likewise. It would seem that originally on the ceiling this was
illustrated faithfully: the two light-skinned brothers dutifully averted their gaze while
darker-skinned son on the extreme right pushed his brothers to look. The restorer however apparently assumed that the brother pointing at Noah and turning his back to us is
Ham, and so he restored the right hand of the brother on the extreme right as waving
vaguely instead of tapping his brother’s shoulder to encourage him to look. As a result the
story is unclear and the expressions of the three sons seem incomprehensible.
The direct papalist moral of the ninth scene
The ninth scene shows Noah dead drunk and naked and his son Ham mocking
him. Though Noah’s conduct was unworthy, Ham was later severely punished for his disrespectfulness toward his father. Now Noah is a precursor and forerunner of the Popes,
and the Pope is the Holy Father of all Christians. The moral of the ninth scene then is that
a Christian should not be disrespectful towards the Pope, who is his spiritual father, even
if the latter is unworthy. That the Pope, however unworthy, must be honored was a basic
papalist thesis, going back to Pope Leo I in the fifth century: ‘[Petri] dignitas etiam in indigno haerede non deficit’.1 The Renaissance Popes’ conduct was often criticized as unworthy, and to reaffirm this ancient principle was clearly thought useful. Like the Sacrifice of
Noah, the Drunkenness of Noah is a minor, almost negligible, event in the Christian tradition, and its occupying a whole scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is by no means
normal and self-evident. The explanation is that it is making a pressing papalist point.
1
Sermo III de Natali, cap. 4, in Migne, PL vol. 54, col. 147. See Ullmann, ‘Medieval Political Thought’,
London 1975, p. 25-30.
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Honor is due the Pope as it was due Noah, and any that scoff at him like Ham will
be punished even as Ham was punished. Ham’s punishment was to be cursed by Noah:
‘Maledictus Chanaan1, servus servorum erit fratribus suis’ (Gen 9:25). Noah points downward to show that he is cursing. He points downward with his left hand, since ‘left’ has
negative connotations, and draws back his right, blessing hand, putting it behind his back.
Pointing down illustrates the curse because it recalls that Ham is condemned to be a ‘servant of servants of his brothers’. Pointing at the earth also expresses cursing in this context
because God cursed the earth when expelling Adam from Paradise (Gen 3:17), and the
story of Noah recalls this curse in Gen 5:29: ‘[Noe] consolabitur nos ad operibus et laboribus manuum nostrarum, in terra cui maledixit Dominus.’
The medallions on the Sistine ceiling
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
l
Flanking the narrow scenes in the central area of the Sistine ceiling inside the
painted cornice are ten large (painted) medallions. The medallions are as if of gilded
bronze, with the gilding worn and the bronze showing through. Nine medallions bear
scenes; the tenth is blank, and what it had on it originally—if anything—is unknown. The
medallions are oriented so that the scenes on them are parallel to the lateral walls and at
right angles to the Genesis scenes. In the following discussion we number the medallions
in zigzag fashion, beginning with the left medallion at the altar end, hopping from one side
of the chapel to the other, and ending at the entrance end on the right. We number the
1
Canaan was Ham’s son, but as can be seen by the rest of the verse, the curse is directed at Ham.
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medallions thus because both the Popes between the windows and the names of the ancestors of Christ in the lunettes are ordered in this way. We discuss the medallions first in
general and then individually.
The contemporary sources (Vasari and Condivi) do not say what the subjects of the
individual medallions are. According to Vasari the episodes are drawn from the books of
Kings, and in fact most are taken from the historical books of the Bible (though not necessarily from the Books of Kings). However illustrating the historical books could not have
been the theme of the medallions, because in the second medallion Abraham sacrifices
Isaac, and that story is in Genesis. According to Condivi, the medallions have to do with
the ‘principale’. Whether by ‘principale’ he meant the series of central scenes or the general theme of the ceiling, he turns out to be right on both counts.
Of Steinmann’s identifications1 only those of medallions Nos. 1, 2, and 4 are still
generally accepted. Medallion No. 3 is blank. Edgar Wind2 revised Steinmann’s identifications of the subjects of the medallions Nos. 5, 6, 7, and 8, and Charles Hope3 that of No. 9.
I myself will propose a new interpretation for medallion No. 10 and offer a suggestion for
what the scene on the missing medallion (No. 3) might have been (or was intended to be).
Of the nine surviving medallions nos. 5, 7, 8, and 9 recount events recorded in the
books of Maccabees, and the others come from Genesis, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, Nehemiah and
Josephus Flavius. Six of the nine scenes, then, take place in the Second Temple era. The
Second Temple era receives so much attention probably because during most of that period the supreme political authority among the Jews was a High Priest.4
In keeping with the general rule of neighborly amity observed on the ceiling, the
medallions harmonize in one way or another with neighboring features in the chapel.
1
See Steinmann, vol. 2, pp. 261-285.
In ‘Maccabean Histories in the Sistine Ceiling’, reprinted as Chapter 9 in Wind, pp. 113-123.
3
In ‘The Medallions on the Sistine Ceiling’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 1 (1987), pp.
200-204.
4
Edgar Wind gives further reasons for the large number of scenes taken from the books of Maccabees.
2
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The continuation of the papalist exposition in the medallions
The medallions are embedded in the central scenes and the ignudi go to extraordinary lengths so that they might frame simultaneously both the central scenes and the medallions, so the medallions and the central scenes must be closely related. The medallions
obviously continue the central scenes in the sense that the episodes they illustrate are later
than Noah, but they also complete them as regards the papalist arguments, since the medallions continue both the argument of hierarchy and Innocent IV’s list of God’s vicars.
As for the vicars of God, the medallions either display or allude to the precursors of
the Pope and of the Church after Noah. The central scenes showed the predecessors of the
Popes as universal rulers and legislators up to Noah and the figures of the Church of that
period: the female at God’s side, Eve, and the Ark. The medallions continue with the vicars
of God between Noah and Christ and the last precursor of the Church, the Temple. Like
the central scenes, besides alluding to hierarchy and representing the predecessors of the
Popes and of the Church, the medallions also contain various papalist morals.
Illustrating the vicars of God in a series of painted medallions was not original: the
old Basilica of St. Peter, which was not yet completely destroyed when the ceiling was being painted, had a series of medallions with images of the Popes on the walls of the nave.
In the Sistine Chapel the Popes are on the walls between the windows, and the medallions
on the ceiling refer to the predecessors of the Pope and of his Spouse, the Church.
The Heavenly Spheres
The medallions complete the argument of hierarchy expressed by the structure of
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the central scenes by referring to the heavenly spheres. There are nine spheres below the
Empyrean sphere according to Dante, and so ten spheres in all. The papalist argument
concerning the heavenly spheres was that just as the Empyrean sphere is on another level
above and beyond the other spheres, so the Pope is on another level above the Church.
Also the heavenly bodies are administered and controlled by the angels, which means that
the spiritual controls the temporal.1
At the time the heavenly spheres were commonly represented as concentric rings
when shown together and as discs when shown separately. They are depicted for example
as discs when shown separately and as concentric rings when shown together in Giovanni
di Paolo’s illustrations of Dante’s ‘Paradiso’ of about 1445.2 From the outside a sphere
looks like a disc, so to represent the celestial spheres as discs is natural, and all the more
so that the first seven spheres are characterized by the planets they contain (the sun and
moon are planets in this system). The one exception was the sphere of the fixed stars,
which Giovanni di Paolo represented as a circle of stars. There were figures or scenes on
the discs and in the circle of stars.
In the same way that the central scenes refer to choirs of angels by their number
and their internal structure, the medallions refer to the heavenly spheres by their number,
their internal structure and their form. There are ten medallions on the ceiling, and in
form they are discs. It was clearly important that the number of medallions be ten, because without modifying the number of scenes the central area could as easily have had
five wide scenes and four narrow ones, and so only eight medallions. Like Giovanni di Paolo’s discs representing the heavenly spheres, the medallions have figures or scenes painted
on them.
The papalist argument concerning the celestial spheres was that the Empyrean
1
See Rivière, p. 183-184.
See John Pope-Henessy, ‘Paradiso, the Illuminations to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Giovanni di Paolo’,
New York 1993.
2
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sphere being above and beyond the other spheres implies that the Pope is on a higher level
than the rest of the Church. The medalion over the Pope’s throne is in fact on a higher level than the others. In it Elijah rises to heaven in a chariot and so hovers above the earth,
while all the participants in the other medallions are on the ground. So the Pope’s medallion is above the others and on a different level.
The ignudi tug at cloth bands attached to the medallions. Since the ignudi are angels,1 this means that the heavenly bodies are controlled by the angels. Hence the temporal
is controlled by the spiritual. Hence the Emperor is controlled by the Pope, or should be.
The only way for there to be ignudi flanking and controlling the medallions was for
the medallions and the ignudi to be parallel to the lateral walls and at right angles to the
central scenes. The medallions were consequently rotated by ninety degrees. For the medallions to be flanked by and controlled by angels was clearly judged indispensable.
The theme of victory or triumph in the medallions
All the medallions express triumph in one way or another. In general medallions
are associated with the idea of triumph, and in the medallions on the ceiling in particular
the color of the medallions is gilded bronze, which is the color of celebratory medals. Condivi said that they were in the form of reverses of medals, and reverses of medals often
refer to victories. Also the medallions are flanked by and connected to the ignudi, who
express triumph by their gestures and expressions, and some of whom have bands of victory tied around their heads. The ignudi also relate to triumph because they share characteristics with the statues on the triumphal Arch of Constantine. The Arch of Constantine
was one of the greatest symbols of triumph at the time, and it appears three times in the
1
See the chapter on the ignudi.
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wall frescos. The ignudi sit on cubic blocks set on the protuberances of the fictive cornice,
and the statues on the Arch of Constantine are similarly placed on cubic blocks set on the
protuberances of a cornice. Also the number of medallions, ten, is the same as the number
of the similarly shaped roundels on the Arch.
The theme of victory in the first two medallions
The two medallions nearest the altar wall represent Elijah rising to heaven and
Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. The two medallions are between the first bay and the
second. The altar area coincides with the first bay, except that at the extreme left this area
encroaches slightly into the second bay. The papal throne was on the altar area against the
left wall between the first two bays; the disposition resembles that of a royal box in a theater. Steps lead up to the altar area, which is on a higher level than the rest of the chapel.
The first medallion is exactly over the papal throne and the second over the steps.
The first point to make about the first two medallions is that like the eight other
medallions they too allude to triumph. However the first two medallions do so in a different manner than the others. The scenes on the first two medallions do not represent triumphs, but rather share a compositional particularity with the roundels on the Triumphal
Arch of Constantine. There are ten roundels on the Arch of Constantine, four on the north
side, four on the south, and one each on the east and west sides. The roundels on the north
and south sides of the Arch of Constantine are grouped in pairs, and in each pair the left
roundel contains horses and the right roundel an altar. The same is true for the first two
medallions on the ceiling. The Elijah medallion is on the left and contains horses, and the
Abraham medallion is on the right and has an altar. In the other medallions the theme of
triumph is explicitly illustrated by their contents. The first two medallions refer to triumph
by having Elijah with his horses in the first medallion and Abraham and an altar in the
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second, rather than the other way round.
The First Medallion
The first medallion represents Elijah rising to heaven in a chariot. It is directly over
the Pope’s throne. This episode was placed here because it refers to the most fundamental
papalist thesis: that the Pope received his powers from Christ, of whom he is the successor
and Vicar. The theme of the medallions is the precursors of the Popes and the Church after
Noah and the Ark. The Elijah medallion stands for the most important link in the series
from the papalist point of view, Christ leaving Peter his powers to bind and loose.
In the upper part of the medallion Elijah rises to heaven in a chariot. The medallion is damaged, and not much can be made out on the left and at the bottom. But almost
all representations of Elijah rising to heaven include his follower and successor Elisha and
the mantle Elijah threw down to Elisha from his chariot. The mantle contained the authority and powers of Elijah and Elisha immediately proceeded to demonstrate these powers
by using the mantle to divide the waters of the Jordan. The composition as it stands, with
Elijah’s head pressed against the top of the medallion and with empty space on the bottom, is ungainly, and the left and lower parts of the medallion almost certainly depicted
Elisha receiving Elijah’s mantle. This was also the opinion of Edgar Wind.
The usual Christian exegesis of Elijah rising to heaven is that it is a figure of
Christ’s Ascension, and the parallel is illustrated on the fifth-century doors of the church
of Santa Sabina in Rome. Now Christ’s Ascension is when Peter started to head the Church
in practice. Peter began to exercise the powers Christ gave him only at the Ascension, because after Christ gave Peter the keys he stayed head of his Church while still on earth. In
the Renaissance this aspect of the Ascension was well known, since Donatello carved a
relief of Peter assuming his powers at the Ascension (now in the Victoria and Albert Mu-
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seum) with Christ handing down the keys to Peter when rising to heaven. Unlike other
Ascensions, here Christ is seated, to emphasize that it is his authority that he is passing to
Peter, since sitting is a position of authority. Christ leaves Peter the keys when rising just
as Elijah rising left his mantle to Elisha.
The mantle Elijah left Elisha contained his powers, and similarly a mantle embodies the powers of the Pope. During the ceremony of investiture the Pope assumed his powers when he donned a mantle, the ‘mantum’. The words pronounced at this point of the
ceremony were: ‘Investio te papatu romano ut praesis urbi et orbi’; that is, ‘I invest thee
with the Roman Papacy that thou may rule over the city and the world’. The ‘mantum’
then represents the universal rulership of the Pope, and Elijah’s mantle being over the
Pope’s throne thus intimates that the Pope’s powers of rulership are universal.
Elijah commanded heaven to send forth fire and water, and heaven obeyed. The
Church Fathers compared Elijah’s powers to the powers possessed by Peter. Cyril of Jerusalem says (in the Latin version)1: ‘Nam Elias revera in cœlum assumptus est at Petrus
habet claves regni cœlorum, cum audieret: “Quæ cunque solveris super terram, erunt soluta in cœlis”.’ The Latin Chrysostom (the ‘Latin Chrysostom’ is a series of patristic homilies
in Latin then accepted in the west as by St. John Chrysostom) identifies Elijah’s powers
with those of the Popes by saying that Elijah has the keys to heaven and that he binds and
looses, and the homily goes on to assert that not only can Elijah do what he wants on
earth, he obtains from heaven whatever he asks for: ‘…clavis cœli fit sermo Heliæ sanctissimi. Iubet enim et clauditur; orat post modum, et aperitur. Claudit, inquam, cœlum, et
aperit; ligat, et soluit; reserat, quod conclusit; ut sanctorum meritum monstraretur, non
solum in terris posse, quod voluit, sed in celestibus posse impetrare, quodcumque petierit’
(‘the speech of the most sainted Elijah became the keys to heaven. For he orders and it
closes, he prays after that and it opens. I say, he closes and opens heaven. He binds and
looses. He opens up what he shut. To show the merits of the saint, not only can he do on
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earth what he wants, he can obtain in heaven whatever he asks for’).2 In addition Elijah
stands in the middle between God and the people and connects one to the other: ‘Stabat
Helias medius inter deum et populum … conjugit dominum populo, et deo populum’ (‘Elijah stood in the middle between God and the people … he joined the Lord to the people,
and the people to God’). In the medallion Elijah driving his chariot to heaven is in fact in
the middle between God and the people and is connecting the one to the other. Now according to Augustinus of Ancona the Pope stands in the middle between God and the People: ‘Medius autem inter Deum et populum Christianum est ipse Papa’.3
The powers attributed in the homily to Elijah—that he possesses the keys to heaven, that he binds and looses and that he stands in the middle between God and the people—are identical with the powers papalist theory claimed were the Pope’s. The medallion
with Elijah rising to heaven and leaving his mantle to Elisha is then over the papal throne
to imply that just as Elijah left these powers to Elisha when rising to heaven, so Christ left
them to the Pope at the Ascension, and just as Elisha was the successor of Elijah, so the
Pope is the successor of Christ.
.
The Second Medallion
The second medallion depicts the sacrifice of Isaac (which, need we remind the
reader, was not consummated). That a medallion should be consecrated to this story from
Genesis may seem odd and even jarring, since the other medallions represent episodes
from the historical books of the Bible. The explanation is that Innocent IV’s list of the vicars of God after Noah begins with the Patriarchs, and the second medallion accordingly
1
See Cyril of Jerusalem, Catachesis XIV 26, Migne, P.G. vol. 33, col. 859.
The Latin Chrysostom, Homilia 11: ‘De Helia’, in Migne-Hamann, ‘Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum’,
vol. IV-1, col. 695 and 696.
2
Summa 44 i.
2
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represents a Patriarch. The Patriarch is Abraham because Abraham (almost) made the
ultimate and emblematic sacrifice of Isaac, thus showing his affinity with the clergy, since
the distinguishing function of a priest is to offer sacrifices to God. So like Noah, who was
his predecessor as vicar of God, Abraham too was to some extent a priest. To make clear
that Abraham is acting as a priest, the sacrifice is performed on an altar, and not, as in the
Bible, on a rock. Representing the Sacrifice of Isaac with an altar was not unusual; in particular this was the way the Sacrifice of Isaac was depicted in S. Paolo fuori le mura. The
reason was that the sacrifice of Isaac was a prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ, which
Christian priests reenact on an altar during the ceremony of the Mass. The Sacrifice of
Isaac on an altar in the second medallion thus harmonizes with the physical altar of the
Sistine Chapel nearby.
The third medallion (beg.)
The third medallion is blank. However we can formulate a reasonable conjecture as
to what the subject of the medallion was (or was to have been). Our method will be to try
to infer from the surviving medallions the principles by which the subjects of the scenes
were determined and then apply these principles to the third medallion. To be able to do
this however the subjects of the surviving medallions must first be correctly identified. The
current identification of the tenth medallion is, in my opinion, incorrect, and in the discussion of the tenth medallion below I shall propose another. We will then be able to proceed. We postpone therefore our discussion of the third medallion till after we have dealt
with the tenth.
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The fourth medallion
Innocent IV’s list of the precursors of the Popes who were vicars of God includes
the Kings of Israel. The fourth medallion illustrates the Kings of Israel by referring to David, and more specifically to a victory of David. David’s son Absalom rebelled against his
father and was defeated. After the battle, as Absalom was fleeing, he passed under a
branch and his long hair got tangled in it. His horse kept galloping on, and Absalom was
left to hang from the tree to his death. This is the instant represented in the medallion:
Absalom hanging by his hair from a branch. The scene thus represents at the same time a
victory of King David, the punishment of a rebel, and the chastisement of an errant son.
All these points have a papalist moral.
That those who rebel against lawmakers and rulers anointed by God are punished
is a major point of the ceiling decoration and is also emphasized on the wall frescos, where
a whole scene is devoted to the punishment of the rebels Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Absalom’s punishment makes the same point. God punished Absalom for rebelling against
King David, who was the emblematic ancestor of Christ. Indeed the kingship of Christ followed from the kingship of David. So rebelling against David is a figure for rebelling
against Christ. The Pope is a king and the Vicar of Christ; and rebelling against him is rebelling against Christ in the same way that rebelling against David is. What this medallion
is saying then is that God will punish rebels to the Pope as he punished Absalom.
Obedience to the Pope was also held to follow from the commandment to honor
one’s parents. On the ceiling this argument is alluded to expansively in the series of ancestors, but it is also referred to here. Absalom was a prince who did not honor his physical
father, David. The fourth medallion illustrates his punishment for failing to follow this
commandment. Let Absalom’s fate be a warning to all princes who do not honor their spiritual father, the Pope.
Absalom hanging by his hair was placed above the prophet Daniel for reasons of
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congruence: Daniel was closely associated with someone hanging by his hair. The Apocrypha, which is missing in Jewish and Protestant Bibles but is included in the Vulgate, recounts that to supply Daniel in his lions’ den with food the prophet Habakkuk was lifted
up by his hair and transported thither. The story of Daniel and Habakkuk was often illustrated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the illustrations always showed Habakkuk
being lifted up by his hair. So the name Daniel brought to mind immediately an image of
someone dangling by his hair. Absalom dangled by his hair and the dangling constituted a
punishment of a disobedient son and a rebel and a triumph of a king of the Jews. Absalom
hanging by his hair was thus a particularly apt episode for the medallion over Daniel.
The sixth medallion
We discuss the sixth medallion before the fifth because the sixth medallion continues the series illustrating the precursors of the Popes according to Innocent IV. Medallion
2 had a Patriarch and medallion 4 alluded to a king. The sixth medallion now contains a
High Priest.
Steinmann’s interpretation of the scene on the sixth medallion was that it represented King David on his knees before the prophet Nathan. Edgar Wind rectified this identification to Alexander the Great kneeling before a High Priest, pointing out that the composition of the scene is identical with that of an illustration of Alexander the Great on his
knees before a High Priest in the Malermi Bible. The Malermi Bible contained illustrations
of Alexander the Great because, uniquely, it included excerpts from Josephus Flavius. According to Josephus, when Alexander saw the High Priest, he dismounted from his horse
and knelt to show his respect for the God of the Jews. In the medallion Alexander’s horse
is present in the background, so the ceiling contains not only an image of Alexander the
Great but also one of Bucephalus.
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The episode of Alexander kneeling before the High Priest is not scriptural or even
apocryphal. It is not present in other church decorations, and it would not have been included here if the aim of the program had been to illustrate the Old Testament, as Condivi
implicitly claims when he says that the ceiling illustrates all the Old Testament. The aim of
the program however is not to illustrate the Old Testament but to lay out Innocent IV’s
papalist argument. Since in his list of the rulers of the Jews who were vicars of God Innocent IV mentions the (High) Priests who were rulers of the Jews, a ruling High Priest had
to appear in some medallion. What was required of this ruling High Priest is that he
should be historical, and if he came from the Bible or from somewhere else was of no consequence. The High Priests were rulers of the Jews in the Second Temple period, and for
this period we dispose not only of the Bible but also of Josephus’s account, which contains
anecdotes absent in the Bible and the Apocrypha. One such anecdote is Alexander kneeling before the High Priest. This was a particularly tempting subject because Alexander was
an emperor, and an emperor on his knees before a high priest brings to mind immediately
the papalist claim that the Pope is above the Emperor.
As usual, the scene was positioned on the ceiling so that harmony should reign between neighbors. The scene on the preceding medallion was related to the neighboring
prophet. In the case of the sixth medallion it was not possible to relate the scene on it to
the neighboring seer, because the sixth medallion is above a sibyl, and the sibylline prophecies were as a rule collective. So there was no individual story or vision associated with
the sibyl for the medallion to harmonize with.1 The medallion consequently harmonizes
with the neighboring Genesis scene. The neighboring Genesis scene is the Creation of Eve,
and the harmonizing is between the two compositions: in both the Creation of Eve and in
the medallion there is a figure on the left kneeling before a standing figure on the right. In
the medallion Alexander kneels before the High Priest and in the Creation of Eve Eve
1
For a discussion of the sibyls see the chapter on the prophets and the sibyls below.
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kneels before God. Thus Alexander kneeling before the High Priest was placed in the sixth
medallion because the composition of the woodcut illustrating this story in the Malermi
Bible resembled the composition of the Creation of Eve on the ceiling.
The Two Swords
Medallions 1, 2, 4 and 6 dealt with the powers and the precursors of the Popes. The
remaining medallions, nos. 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10, have to do with the precursor of the Church,
the Temple. They refer to the papalist theory of the two swords, and their point is that the
temporal power is at the service of the spiritual power.
The doctrine of the two swords is based on a text in Luke. Luke 22:38 recounts how
the Disciples showed Jesus two swords, and Jesus said: ‘Satis est’ (‘it is sufficient’). The
two swords were interpreted as standing for the temporal and the spiritual powers. The
imperialists claimed that the text in Luke showed that the temporal sword is independent
of the spiritual sword, and the Emperor’s legitimacy and powers in the temporal domain
derive directly from Christ. The Pope may be the spiritual Vicar of Christ, but the Emperor
is his temporal vicar. Here is Pope Boniface VIII’s response1:
In hac eiusque potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem videlicet et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. Nam dicentibus apostolis: ‘Ecce gladii duo
hic’, in ecclesia scilicet, cum apostoli loquerentur, non respondit Dominus, nimis,
esse, sed satis. … Uterque ergo est in potestate ecclesiae, spiritualis scilicet gladius
et materialis. Sed is quidem pro ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia exercendus. Ille sac1
In his bull ‘Unam sanctam’. Boniface VIII of course did not invent the argument, and the bull is repeating
earlier pronouncements. See Walter Ullmann, ‘The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages’, London 1965, p. 431.
81
erdotis, is manu regum et militium, sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis.
Boniface’s answer then is that when the Apostles showed Jesus the spiritual and
temporal swords they said: ‘See the two swords here’. By saying ‘See the two swords here’,
here and not there, the Apostles indicated that both swords are at their disposal. The
Apostles stand for the Church, so the assertion signifies that both swords belong to the
Church. Now Christ did not answer that two swords are too many and that the Apostles
should give one to someone else, but rather said, ‘They suffice’. Christ thus approved the
Church keeping both swords. The only difference between the two swords is that one is to
be exercised for the Church and the other by the Church directly. The spiritual sword is
given to the priests and the temporal sword is put in the hands of the kings and the military, but the temporal sword is at the service of (at the beck and call of) the priests.
The five medallions 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 accordingly illustrate the two swords. Following Boniface VIII, the temporal sword is identified with temporal rulers and soldiers, and
the temporal rulers and soldiers are shown defending the Temple (i.e., the Church). The
divine punishments incurred by foreign enemies of the Temple illustrate the spiritual
sword. These enemies are a ruler, a soldier and a civilian, corresponding to the fact that
the defenders of the Temple are similarly a ruler, a soldier and a civilian. The medallions’
illustrating the two swords explains why the scenes are so violent. No wonder they are violent: they illustrate the two swords. As usual, the episodes were chosen and their locations
fixed so that the scenes might harmonize with neighboring features.
The fifth medallion
The fifth medallion represents the defeat and punishment of Nicanor. The correct
interpretation of the scene was late in coming, and is due to Edgar Wind. It seems obvious
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once it is pointed out. Nicanor was a foreign general who tried to re-establish pagan Syrian
control over the Temple. He was defeated, and as punishment for his blasphemy his head
and right hand were cut off and displayed on the city walls of Jerusalem (1 Mac 7:47). The
medallion contains a severed head and hands being displayed on the walls of a city. It
should therefore represent the defeat and punishment of Nicanor.
The medallion contains two severed hands while 1 Mac 7:47 only mentions
Nicanor’s right hand and 2 Mac 15:30 his hand and arm. An illustration of this episode in
the 1493 edition of the Malermi (or Mallerbi, or Malherbi) Bible contains a second hand,
and this is apparently why the medallion contains two hands. The Malermi Bible was a
Italian translation of the Bible that went through many editions, and only the 1493 edition
has two severed hands. The illustrations in this edition are in general fairly unskillful approximate mirror images of the ones in the other editions, so one may assume that the
edition was pirated. The two hands are then simply a careless mistake, and Michelangelo’s
repeating the mistake on the ceiling shows that he did not read the Bible very carefully.
The medallion is over the prophet Ezekiel. Nicanor’s defeat and punishment were
associated with Ezekiel because Ezekiel prophesied that an enemy, Gog, would come from
the north accompanied by a great army and that he would be soundly defeated (chap. 38 &
39). Nicanor, an enemy, came from the north accompanied by a great army and was
soundly defeated. The location of Nicanor’s spectacular defeat over Ezekiel shows that it
was regarded as the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Since the battle was a Jewish victory,
the medallion partakes of the medallions’ general theme of triumph.
Since Nicanor’s head and severed hands are displayed in the medallion, the battle
must be his last. Nicanor’s last battle was fought against Judas Maccabæus, and it was he
who ordered that Nicanor’s head and arm be cut off (2 Macc 15:30), so the helmeted person with a raised sword in the middle should be Judas Maccabeus. Indeed the helmet resembles the helmet of the Maccabean in the seventh medallion.
The medallion illustrates at the same time Innocent IV’s list of the precursors of
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the Popes as vicars of God and Boniface VIII’s two swords. Judas Maccabeus was a ruler of
the Jews, a hereditary priest and a general, so the scene depicts simultaneously a vicar of
God who was a precursor of the Popes (thus illustrating the list of Innocent IV) and a
priest fighting for the Temple (thus illustrating the argument of Boniface VIII).
The medallion corresponds at the same time to Boniface VIII’s temporal sword and
to his spiritual sword. According to Boniface VIII the temporal sword is put in the hands
of the rulers and the soldiers, whose role is to defend the priests. Judas Maccabeus was a
ruler and a soldier who defended the Temple. Judas Maccabeus was also a priest, and the
sword he holds is also the spiritual sword put directly in the hands of the priests. Nicanor
was a military man, and he is the soldier among the three types of enemies of the Temple
represented in the medallions.
Judas Maccabeus, who was at the same time a priest, a temporal ruler, and a soldier, must have been particularly appreciated by Julius II, who was similarly a priest, a
temporal ruler and a soldier. Julius II participated personally in his battles, in spite of his
advanced age (over sixty), and like the Maccabeans, who fought to liberate Judea from a
foreign occupation force, the Syrians, Julius II was similarly preoccupied with ridding Italy of a foreign occupying force, the French.
Judas Maccabeus appears in the fifth medallion, which is one of the two central
medallions. The other central medallion is the sixth, which depicts an emperor on his
knees before a High Priest. It is surely no accident that the two central medallions correspond so closely to Julius II’s image of himself.
The seventh medallion
As Edgar Wind has shown, the scene on the seventh medallion was also taken from
the Malermi Bible, and depicts a Maccabean destroying an idol on an altar. The second
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medallion (the Sacrifice of Isaac) is the second one dealing with the predecessors and the
powers of the Pope and it contains an altar. Medallion 7 is the second medallion dealing
with the predecessor of the Church, the Temple, and it similarly contains an altar. The
scene is a fitting one for this medallion because it contains an altar, it depicts a victory,
and it illustrates both the arguments of Innocent IV and of Boniface VIII.
That the scene illustrates a triumph is clear. Next, the scene illustrates Boniface
VIII’s argument of the two swords because the Maccabeans were both priests and generals
fighting for the Temple. Ridding the Temple of an idol was therefore a victory for the both
the temporal and the spiritual swords. To show that the scene has to do with the two
swords, the Maccabean destroys the idol with a sword and a presumably lay soldier is depicted unsheathing his. The scene also illustrates the argument of Innocent IV, because
the Maccabeans were rulers of the Jews for a time, and so are implicitly included in the list
of Innocent IV of the vicars of God between Noah and Jesus.
Like the sixth medallion, the seventh medallion is over a sibyl (the Erythrean) and
not a prophet, and so the episode on it harmonizes with the neighboring scene in the central series. This neighboring scene is the sacrifice of Noah. The common element in the
Sacrifice of Noah and in the scene on the medallion is an altar: the Sacrifice of Noah includes a prominent altar, and in the scene with the Maccabean destroying an idol the idol
is standing on an equally prominent altar. This scene then was placed near the Sacrifice of
Noah because by containing an altar it possesses a formal resemblance with it.
The eighth medallion
The eighth medallion recounts the fate of Heliodorus as related in Chapter 3 of the
Second Book of Maccabees. Heliodorus was a civilian functionary sent by a foreign king to
make an inventory of the Temple treasury and then loot it. He was foiled by the sudden
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appearance of a horseman and of two young men of surpassing beauty (i.e., angels). The
horse attacked Heliodorus with its hooves and the young men scourged him. The episode
demonstrates violent divine intervention in defense of the Temple and the horrendous
punishment meted out to its enemies. It took place at a time when the ruler of the Jews
was the Temple. It thus illustrates both the spiritual sword as described by Boniface VIII
and the ‘others who ruled over the Jews’ of Innocent IV. The eighth medallion corresponds
to the spiritual sword punishing a foreign enemy who was a civilian.
The story of Heliodorus was placed over Isaiah because it resembles closely an
event recorded in the thirty-ninth chapter of Isaiah.1 This chapter recounts how envoys of
a foreign king were shown around the state treasury. Isaiah prophesied that the foreigners
will loot the treasury, and this eventually happened. There is however a difference between
the story of Heliodorus and the one in Isaiah: the story of Heliodorus ended in triumph
and the one in Isaiah in defeat. One of the themes of the medallions is triumph, so the story in 2 Maccabees was illustrated on the medallion in preference to the one in Isaiah.
The ninth medallion
The correct identification of the scene is due to Charles Hope. Like the eighth medallion, the ninth medallion depicts a triumph of the Temple over a foreign enemy in the
Maccabean era through divine intervention, and as in the eighth medallion the emphasis
is on the blasphemer’s awful earthly punishment. Antiochus Epiphanes, who had looted
the Temple and placed an idol in it, boasted that he would make of Jerusalem a heap of
graves for the Jews. He was seized with incurable internal wounds, pains and torments,
and fell off his chariot. All his joints were dislocated, worms came out of his eyes, his flesh
1
Isa 39:1-8 repeats, practically word for word, 2 K 20:12-19.
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rotted off and he stank horribly. Though Antiochus then promised to send the most splendid gifts to the Temple, in the end he died in agony (2 Mac, ch. 9).
Like the eighth medallion, the ninth represents the spiritual sword acting for the
Temple directly rather than through the temporal power. In the Absalom medallion, the
fourth of the ones dealing with the Pope’s powers and predecessors, the enemies of the
Pope were shown that strict and painful punishment awaits them; in the Antiochus medallion, the fourth of the ones dealing with the Temple, the enemies of the Church are shown
the same thing. In the Absalom medallion the enemy is an internal rebel and in the Antiochus one an external foe. In both cases the enemies are, significantly, royal figures.
The story of Antiochus falling from his chariot was placed here because it contains
a person falling off a chariot. On the same side of the chapel at the altar end the first medallion showed Elijah rising to heaven in a chariot; symmetrically the ninth medallion at
the entrance end shows Antiochus falling to earth from his. The first medallion participates in the general upward movement at the altar end, and the ninth medallion in the
downward movement at the entrance end. In Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’ (Canto 32) a chariot
symbolizes the Church. In the first medallion the Church is led to victory by the Pope, and
in the ninth medallion the Church triumphs over a usurper, who is thrown off to the
ground.
The tenth medallion
The tenth medallion is damaged, and part of it is missing. There exists an engraving by Cherubino Alberti (1533-1615) that reproduces the complete medallion,1 but a comparison with the medallion in its present state shows that the engraving is not entirely
faithful. Thus in the medallion the figure on the right has a foot and a hand hidden by a bit
1
See Tolnay, vol. 2, plate 219 and Steinmann, vol. 2, p. 231 for reproductions.
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of wall; in the engraving this bit of wall is interpreted as a column. Nevertheless, the perceptions of the engraving are instructive, and help us to identify the scene.
What we see on the tenth medallion is on the left a large, imposing person facing
us, and on the right a smaller, slightly stooped helmeted figure facing left. The helmeted
figure on the right has his left hand and foot inside a gate or a breach in the wall and he
holds a sword in his right hand. Steinmann identified the scene as Joab killing Abner inside a gate. This identification is certainly incorrect. The reason the helmeted figure is
smaller than the person on the left is that he is further inside the pictorial space and further away from the picture plane, and so he cannot be aiming his sword at him. Also neither one of the protagonists is inside a gate, but rather on either side of a wall. This last is
not a minor discrepancy: the Malermi Bible correctly illustrates Joab killing Abner as taking place inside an arched gate. If Michelangelo had wished to illustrate the Joab and Abner episode, he too would have put them inside an arched gate, because in general he repeated the Malermi compositions whenever possible. Also, Alberti’s engraving shows that
Alberti did not have the impression that the person on the left was being threatened, much
less killed. Rather he thought that this person is orating. So the interpretation of the medallion as representing Joab and Abner is unsatisfactory.
On the other hand, there is an episode in the book of Nehemiah that corresponds
closely to the medallion. The book of Nehemiah recounts how, after returning to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon, the Jews were attacked by the locals. Nehemiah, who was
the Governor of the Jews, instructed them to repair the city walls and gates so that they
might defend themselves. The Jews built in (sic) the wall, carrying and putting down
heavy materials, working with one hand while holding a sword by their side with the other: ‘Ædificantium in muro, et portantium onera et imponentium, una manu sua faciebat
opus, et altera tenebat gladium; ædificantium enim unusquisque gladio erat accintus
renes’ (Neh 4:17-18). This corresponds to what we see on the medallion. The helmeted
figure on the right is putting materials in the wall with one hand while holding a sword by
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his side with the other. He has stepped inside an opening in the wall to show that he is
working in the wall. He is stooped because the materials are heavy. The person on the left,
who is not being wounded or threatened in any way with bodily harm, is making a speech.
The person on the left should then be Nehemiah telling his countrymen to repair the openings in the wall, and the figure on the right a Jew doing just that. The Jew has a helmet on
and is holding a sword by his side to show that he is prepared to fight.
This medallion illustrates both Innocent IV’s argument for papal primacy and Boniface VIII’s argument of the two swords. Nehemiah fits Innocent IV’s criteria for being a
precursor of the Pope and a vicar of God, since he governed over the Jews for a time. The
scene also illustrates Boniface VIII’s assertion that the temporal sword should be at the
service of the Church. Nehemiah was a civil governor and the Jew holding a sword presumably a layman, so the medallion represents an occasion when the temporal sword was
at the service of the Temple.
The theme of triumph is not forgotten. In Alberti’s engraving there is a pediment at
the top of the medallion. Nehemiah’s main objective was to rebuild the Temple, and it
seems likely that the pediment was supposed to allude to the Temple. The Temple was
included in the medallion to show that the helmeted figure’s sword was used in its defense,
and also because Nehemiah’s achievements constituted a triumph for the Temple.
The scene was placed in a medallion near the entrance of the chapel because it depicts the repairing of an opening in a wall. The medallion thus harmonizes with a neighboring physical feature of the chapel, the entrance. The corresponding medallion on the
same side of the chapel nearest the altar wall similarly harmonizes with a nearby physical
feature. This medallion (No. 2) represents Abraham sacrificing Isaac on an altar, which
echoes the physical altar of the chapel near the front wall.
The third medallion (cont.)
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We now return to the blank third medallion. We have determined what the subjects of the scenes on the nine surviving medallions are and seen why they were placed as
they were. This allows us to infer the principles followed when deciding what story should
be illustrated in a given medallion. We will then apply these principles to the third medallion to recover the subject of the scene it depicted or was intended to depict.
The nine surviving medallions all allude either to the Pope or to the Church, so we
may assume that the blank medallion also referred to one or the other. Four medallions (1,
2, 4, and 6) refer to the powers and the precursors of the Pope and five medallions (5, 7, 8,
9, and 10) have to do with the Temple. That the two themes were evenly divided seems
plausible, and that hence there were also five medallions concerned with the Pope. So medallion 3 may well have contained a precursor of the Popes.
The rulers of the Jews mentioned explicitly by Innocent IV as Vicars of God and
precursors of the Popes were the Patriarchs, the Judges, the Kings, and the Priests. Medallions 2, 4 and 6 refer to a Patriarch, a King and a High Priest, respectively. There is no
judge on the ceiling. On the other hand, the third medallion is blank. It seems likely therefore that the scene on the blank third medallion involved a judge. Also, most of the medallions represent triumphs, so the third medallion should allude to a triumph of a judge.
We can go further. The episodes represented on the nine surviving medallions were
chosen so as to fit their location in the chapel, so this should be true of the blank medallion
as well. The medallions fall into two categories: the pairs nearest the altar and entrance
walls and the others. The scenes on the medallions nearest the altar and entrance walls
were fixed by considerations of long-range symmetry and by nearby physical features in
the chapel. The others were determined either by a text connected to the adjacent prophet,
if there was one, or by the composition of the adjacent central scene, if there wasn’t.
The blank third medallion is not near the altar or entrance walls, so it falls into the
second category of medallions, those harmonizing either with a text connected with the
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adjacent prophet or with the composition of the adjacent scene. Being over a sibyl, the
third medallion does not have an adjacent prophet. It follows that the episode depicted on
it was related to the composition of the adjacent scene. The adjacent scene is the Separation of the Waters. The most conspicuous feature of the composition of the Separation of
the Waters is that it shows God extending both his hands, and that the hands are equally
prominent. The story illustrated in the medallion should then involve two equal hands.
So altogether the story illustrated in the third medallion should concern the triumph of a judge who ruled over Israel and involve two equal hands. These desiderata suffice for us to identify the scene. For of the twelve judges who ruled over Israel and whose
actions are recorded in the Book of Judges, a single one satisfies all the conditions.
That one is Ehud (‘Aod’ in the Vulgate, ‘Aoth’ in the Malermi Bible). According to
the Vulgate, Ehud was ambidextrous: ‘utraque manu pro dextera utebatur’ (Jud 3:15). It
was thanks to this characteristic that he was able to free the Jews from their subjugation to
the Ammonite King Eglon. Ehud went to see Eglon apparently unarmed and bearing gifts.
But Ehud had a sword attached to his right thigh hidden under his clothes. Being ambidextrous, he was able to draw this sword out unexpectedly with his left hand. He plunged
the sword all the way into Eglon’s belly till it disappeared in the wound and came out in
the back. The Jews under Ehud then won a great victory over the leaderless Ammonites.
The story recounts at the same time a triumph of a judge and the punishment of a
foreign oppressor. It involves two equal hands in an essential way. It seems likely therefore that the scene on the third medallion depicted Ehud and Eglon. We can imagine Ehud
wielding a sword with his left hand and King Eglon, very fat (‘crassus nimis’) and crowned,
rising from his seat in his summer upper chamber to hear the secret message Ehud claims
he has for him. That is how this episode is illustrated in the Malermi Bible, and since several other medallions follow the Malermi Bible illustrations, the third medallion may well
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have looked something like the Malermi Bible illustration of this episode.1
One advantage of this solution is that it would explain why the medallion was censored or erased. In the Malermi Bible illustration of the story of Ehud and Eglon, Ehud
runs a long sword from left to right through Eglon. Eglon, who is crowned, has just risen
from his throne, and the throne, very large and prominent, occupies the whole of the right
part of the illustration. Ehud’s sword is thus also pointed at Eglon’s throne. Now the third
medallion is on the left side of the Sistine ceiling between the second and the third bays
(counting from the altar wall), and the throne of the Pope was against the left wall between
the first bay and the second. The medallion is thus above the Pope’s throne and diagonally
to the left of it. If the third medallion resembled the Malermi Bible illustration, then
Ehud’s sword would have been pointed, not only at the painted throne in the medallion,
but also in the direction of the throne of the Pope in the chapel. Having so near the papal
throne a medallion containing a throne and a crowned person rising from it being run
through by a sword, with the sword pointed both at the painted throne in the medallion
and in the direction of the actual throne of the Pope in the chapel, may well have been
deemed inappropriate and inauspicious. And so the scene was expunged.
Medallions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 contain or allude to a prophet (Elijah), a Patriarch
(Abraham), a judge (Ehud), a king (David), and a High Priest. Christ was priest, prophet
and king. As his Vicar, the Pope assumes these roles, and also that of Patriarch (the Pope
is the Patriarch of Rome, the others being the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem,
Alexandria and Antioch) and that of supreme judge on earth. These five medallions then,
besides referring to the powers and the predecessors of the Popes as Vicars of God, also
detail their five roles.
1
Wind (p. 107) interpreted an eighteenth century engraving by Domenico Cunego as implying that the blank
third medallion originally had on it two nude figures making love. Hope (p. 202) retorts that Cunego’s engraving is unreliable, since none of the earlier reproductions of the ceiling shows the two nudes. The more
recent commentators agree with Hope rather than with Wind.
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The Ignudi on the Sistine Ceiling
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
The central scenes and the medallions on the Sistine ceiling are surrounded by and
interwoven with figures of large sitting nude youths called ‘ignudi’. The ignudi face each
other in pairs, and they frame both the medallions and the scenes. In the original project
for the ceiling they were much smaller, framed the medallions only, and had wings. It has
been suggested several times that the ignudi are angels. They are angels first because the
original figures framing the medallions had wings, and second because there is a series of
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bronze-colored nude demons on the ceiling.
These nudes are the negative complement of the ignudi: like the ignudi they are
nude and come in framing pairs, but they are dark and monochrome. Now the bronzecolored nudes are clearly demons. Their contraries, the ignudi, must therefore be angels.
The ignudi’s winglessness is no objection to this identification, because the angels surrounding and sustaining God in the central scenes have no wings either.
The choirs of angels are hierarchically ordered, and the ignudi frame both the medallions and the central scenes to suggest that both have to do with hierarchy. To drive in
the point that the nine central scenes allude to the nine orders of the angelic hierarchies,
the angels flanking the medallions in the original project were enlarged so as to also frame
the scenes. At the same time the ignudi frame the ten medallions, which, as we saw in the
previous chapter, allude to the ten hierarchically ordered celestial spheres. The ignudi tug
at bands connected to the medallions to show that the angels control the heavenly bodies
(and that hence the spiritual controls the temporal).
There is an upward motion congruent with hierarchy in the gestures of the ignudi
as well as in the scenes as we advance from the entrance to the altar. The four ignudi framing the drunkenness of Noah all have their arms and legs hanging down (we know the position of the missing leg in the damaged part of the fresco because the pairs of ignudi nearest the entrance are strictly symmetrical). Among the ignudi around the sacrifice of Noah
there is one raised arm and two raised legs. Two of the four ignudi surrounding the creation of Eve raise their arms and two raise a leg. Beginning with this point the ignudi have
cushions (the earlier ones make do with the bare stone). The ignudi around the separation
of the waters have two raised arms (both by the same ignudo), two slightly raised legs and
two fully raised ones, and for the first time the raised legs are in the foreground. Among
the final four ignudi around the separation of light from darkness, two ignudi have their
arms over their heads, and three raise a leg emphatically and one slightly. This monotonically rising movement emulates the hierarchical progression of the choirs of angels.
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The ignudi get steadily bigger and more animated as we advance towards the altar
wall. This may or may not reflect the hierarchical structure of the choirs of angels. On the
one hand, the prophets also get bigger as we advance toward the altar wall. On the other
hand, the increasing size of the angels does emulate the steady rise in their gestures, and it
is tempting to see in it another allusion to hierarchy.
The ignudi being angels fits the theory that the structure of the central series of
scenes alludes to the choirs of angels. It also explains why the original project was modified and the figures framing the medallions made larger and their torsos inserted between
the central scenes: precisely to emphasize that the central scenes have to do with the hierarchies of angels. Thus the ignudi’s prominence is not an extraneous imposition revealing
only Michelangelo’s homosexual leanings, as is often assumed, but is rather due to the
importance of the theory of hierarchy in papalist thought and propaganda.
Besides referring to hierarchy, the figures of the ignudi glorify the Pope in other
ways. First, the ignudi carry horns of plenty filled with oak acorns. The acorns allude to the
family name of Pope Julius II, della Rovere, which means ‘of the oak’, and the horns of
plenty proclaim that Julius II was infinitely generous. Vasari already remarked that the
horns of plenty and swags of oak leaves were in honor of the Pope. We note that the loads
of acorns and oak leaves over the papal throne are exceptionally luxuriant.
Second, as we noted in the section on the medallions, the ignudi express triumph
by their expressions and attitudes and also by their positions on the fictive architecture.
These positions are the same as those of the statues on the triumphal Arch of Constantine:
mthe ignudi sit on cubes set on the protuberances of a cornice, and the statues on the Arch
of Constantine stand on cubes set on the protuberances of the cornice. Since the ignudi are
connected to and frame the medallions, and the scenes on the medallions refer to the Pope
and the Church, the triumph expressed by the ignudi is of the Pope and of the Church.
The third point has to do with the cloth bands that connect the medallions to the
ignudi. These bands pass through slits in the rims around the medallions and touch the
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ignudi in various parts of their anatomies. The ignudi struggle against the bands or hold
them negligently. They tighten them, loosen them, and sit and step on them. In all cases
the ignudi and the bands are inseparable. The bands are also tied to iron rings fixed in the
walls.
The bands apparently refer to the legal authority of the Pope.1 On the one hand
Aquinas (and others) derived the Latin word for ‘law’, lex, from ligando, ‘to bind’ or ‘to
tie’,2 and the bands are tied to the iron rings. On the other hand, when granting Peter his
powers Jesus said that he was giving Peter the power to ‘bind and loose’: ‘quodcumque
ligaveris super terram erit ligatum et in cælis, et quodcumque solveris super terram erit
solutum et in cælis’ (Matt 16:19). The traditional interpretation of this phrase is that binding means to forbid and loosing to allow, and that together ‘binding and loosing’ means to
legislate in the narrow sense and more generally to apply the law to or to rule over. Now
the bands are variously tight (at times very tight) and loose (sometimes very loose). Altogether then the bands seem to refer to the legal authority of the Pope.
Besides referring to the legal authority of the Pope in general, the ignudi’s involvement with the bands also refers to a specific papalist argument concerning the angels. To
apply the law is to judge, and in 1 Cor 6:3 Paul says: ‘Nescitis quoniam angelos judicabimus? Quanto magis sæcularia!’ (‘Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much the
more so temporal things!’) This verse was often cited in the Middle Ages as proof that the
Popes enjoy supreme jurisdiction on earth. ‘For Gregory VII, Innocent III and Innocent
IV, the argument of the Pauline text was the same: he who may judge the higher (spiritual)
necessarily had jurisdiction over the lower (temporal).’3
1
One is reminded of Michelangelo’s two Slaves in the Louvre, which are similarly nude youths struggling
against or negligently playing with straps. The Slaves are slightly later than the ignudi—they are usually
dated 1513-1516—and it is clear that there is a formal kinship between them. The meaning of the straps in
the two cases may or may not be the same. The Slaves were intended for the tomb of Julius II, so their straps
may be the bonds of death or they may represent the powers of the Pope here too.
2
‘dicitur enim lex a “ligando”,’ ST 1-2 xc 1 resp.
3
J. A. Watt, ‘The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: the Contribution of the Canonists’,
London 1965, p. 65.
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To illustrate this argument the ignudi are inseparable from the cloth bands, which
they both manipulate and are bound by. The bands represent the judicial powers of the
Pope, and the ignudi’s preoccupation with the bands implies that the Popes’ jurisdictional
powers extend to the angels. This is why the bands are tied to iron rings fixed in fictive
walls. The fictive walls coincide with the real walls of the chapel, and the chapel represents
the Church and, since the chapel is a papal one, also the Pope. It follows that the Church
and the Popes have jurisdiction over the angels and hence over the temporal rulers.
The ignudi keep one foot touching the fictive cornice, and, in one case, a medallion.
Jesus gave Peter the power to legislate ‘in heaven as on earth’. The angels are in heaven,
and to indicate that the Popes have the power to legislate on earth, the ignudi carefully
keep one foot on the ground.
The ignudi sit and step on the bands. There must be a reason for this, since to sit
and step on cloth bands is very curious. The papalist reason they step on their bands is to
indicate that the Pope subjects all under his feet. In Ephesians 1:22 Paul declares of Christ
that God subjected all under his feet and gave him to be head over the whole church: ‘omnia subjecit sub pedibus ejus, et ipsum dedit caput super omnem ecclesiam’. Even for
moderate Catholics the Pope is head over the whole church, ‘caput super omnem ecclesiam’, and Augustinus Triumphus applies the rest of the verse too to the Pope and asserts
that the Pope subjects all under his feet, ‘omnia subjecit sub pedibus ejus’.1
The ignudi are seated so conspicuously to show that they have to do with the papacy and recall the papalist contention that the Pope cannot be judged by others. In general
to sit is a position of authority, and kings and bishops have thrones and cathedrae. But the
highest seat of all is that of the Pope, and the papacy is officially the Holy See, which
means the Holy Seat (Sancta Sedes). The Sancta Sedes is also called Prima Sedes (the First
Seat), and the sitting position may have been meant to bring to mind the papalist principle
1
In ‘Summa de ecclesiastica potestate’ xix 2.
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that ‘Prima sedes a nemine judicatur’ (the First Seat is judged by no one).1
Papalism is also responsible for the ignudi’s nudity and their not having wings. In
Early Christian art the angels are represented without wings, and winged angels became
general only after the fourth century. Wingless angels are still met with from time to time,
though very rarely, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and are perfectly orthodox; almost always, however, the angels have wings. The question, why on the Sistine ceiling in
particular they are so systematically without wings, merits therefore some scrutiny.
Usually the angels’ winglessness on the ceiling is attributed to Michelangelo’s personal tastes, though why these tastes required the angels not to have wings is left unexplained. In fact both in his youth and in his old age Michelangelo produced winged angels
quite willingly, and even in a preparatory sketch for the ceiling itself the angels framing
the medallions have wings. So there must be something more to it.
By shedding their wings the angels assume human form. Innocent IV said that ‘Deus creavit in principio cælum et terram, et omnia quæ in eis sunt, Angelicam et humanam
naturam, spiritualia et temporalia, ipsaque per seipsum rexit.’ That is, ‘At the beginning
God created heaven and earth and all things that are in them, angelic and human nature,
the spiritual and the temporal, and these he ruled over by himself’. Innocent IV’s point
was that since God ruled over both the spiritual and the temporal, so does the Pope his
successor. The ‘spiritualia et temporalia’ are in apposition to ‘angelicam et humanam naturam’, and the singular form of the expression ‘angelicam et humanam naturam’ suggests
that the angelic and human natures may be united in a single person. To express that the
Pope rules over both the spiritual and the temporal the ignudi unite the angelic and the
human. As evidence of their spirituality a wind, ‘spiritus’ in Latin, is blowing through their
hair, and they are angelic also by their beauty. By their form they are human. For their
form and beauty to be manifest they are necessarily (and ostentatiously) nude.
The ignudi then are both spiritual and corporal. Since the spiritual man is by defi1
For the history of this doctrine see Klaus Schatz, ‘Papal Primacy’, Collegeville, Minnesota 1996, pp. 73ff.
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nition both spiritual and corporal, the ignudi apparently refer to an important argument in
favor of papal supremacy, the so-called argument of the spiritual man, the ‘homo spiritualis’. In 1 Cor 2:15 Paul says that the spiritual man judges all and is himself judged by no
one. The papalists identified Paul’s spiritual man with the Pope, and said that the meaning
of this verse is that the Pope is the supreme judge on earth and that only God can judge
the Pope. In ‘Unam sanctam’ Boniface VIII says:
Ergo si deviat terrena potestas, judicabitur a potestate spirituali; sed si deviat spiritualis minor, a sua superiori; si vero suprema, a solo Deo, non ab homine
poterit judicari; testante apostolo: Spiritualis homo iudicat omnia, ipse autem a
nemine judicatur.
That is,
Therefore if an earthly power errs, it will be judged by the spiritual power; if
an inferior spiritual [power] errs, [it will be judged] by its superior [spiritual power]; but if the supreme [spiritual power errs], it can be judged by God alone, not by
man, since the Apostle [Paul] testifies: ‘The spiritual man judges all things and he
himself is judged by no one’.
Boniface VIII’s argument is that 1 Cor 2:15 and Jer 1:10 (‘Today I have placed thee
over the nations and the kingdoms’) imply that the spiritual (read ‘priestly’) power is
above the temporal power and passes judgment on it if necessary. Since the higher spiritual power passes judgment over the lower spiritual power and the lower cannot judge the
higher, it follows that only God can judge the highest spiritual power, the Pope.
The principle that the Pope cannot be judged by others had particular resonance
and applicability during the reign of Julius II. To get elected Pope the future Julius II dis-
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tributed liberally both promises and money. He then failed to keep the promises that he
had made under oath, notably the one to convene a general council within two years. For
this failure and other alleged misdeeds a strong movement arose to judge and depose him
if he persisted in not fulfilling his promises. In 1511 the Emperor and the King of France
convoked a general council at Pisa for this purpose. To counter the Council of Pisa Julius
II did finally convene a general council (the Fifth Lateran Council), where the address of
the papal legate, Cajetan, was concerned with establishing precisely that no one can judge
the Pope, and that hence the Council of Pisa was schismatic.
To resume: The size and prominence of the ignudi correspond to the multiple ways
in which they glorify the Pope. By carrying swags of oaken acorns and leaves they honor
Julius II personally. By tightening and loosing straps of cloth they refer to the Pope’s powers to bind and loose, i.e., to legislate. By interweaving with the central scenes and the medallions they indicate that the central scenes and the medallions have to do with hierarchy.
By controlling the medallions they show that the spiritual controls the temporal. By their
triumphal attitudes and by sustaining the medallions, the scenes on which refer to the
Pope and the Church, they imply that heaven will cause the Pope and the Church to triumph. And by uniting the spiritual and the temporal they recall that the Pope similarly
unites the two and is therefore the spiritual man who judges others and cannot be judged
by them.
The ignudi are perhaps the most immediately arresting visual feature of the ceiling.
Vasari began his description of the ceiling with them. It is fitting, therefore, that they
should possess the most elaborately papalist meanings.
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The composition and fictive architecture
of the central area of the Sistine ceiling
©2008 by Elhanan Motzkin
We can now see precisely why the central area of the Sistine ceiling is made out as
it is and what whoever drew up its composition had in mind. Before Julius II’s intervention the ceiling was covered with stars on a blue ground and so represented heaven. In the
new version of the ceiling the idea was to keep the ceiling’s identification with heaven, in
the central area at any rate, but infuse it with references to arguments for papalism having
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to do with heaven. One fundamental argument for papal primacy having to do with heaven
is the law of hierarchy, since the prime exemplars of hierarchy are the nine heavenly choirs
and the ten celestial spheres. A second papalist argument involving heaven is that since
the angels control the heavenly bodies, the spiritual controls the temporal and hence the
Pope is over the Emperor and the other temporal rulers. A third papalist contention implicating heaven is that papal primacy follows from the divine law.
To indicate that the central area inside the cornice opens up on the heavens there
are two narrow blue strips before and after the complex of scenes and medallions. The
makeup of the central area, nine scenes, ten medallions and the pairs of ignudi controlling
the medallions, alludes to the elements in the heavens that imply papal primacy: the nine
scenes allude to the nine heavenly choirs of angels, the ten medallions to the ten celestial
spheres, and the ignudi controlling the medallions represent the angels controlling the
heavenly bodies. The contents of the nine scenes similarly both concern heaven and assert
papal primacy, because the scenes detail the types of the divine law, which implies papal
primacy. The message then of the central area of the ceiling is that the heavens proclaim
papal supremacy. The central scenes and the medallions develop further the papalist argumentation by representing the precursors of the Popes as supreme rulers and legislators
and by adducing various papalist morals.
The central scenes and the medallions are imbricated to make it clear that they expose a single historical argument (the precursors of the Pope and the Church) and that
they have a common anagogic sense (hierarchy). To have ten medallions imbricated in the
nine central scenes there had to be five narrow scenes and four wide ones rather than, say,
five wide scenes and four narrow ones. The formal layout of the central area then, with
four wide scenes alternating with five narrow ones flanked by medallions, is not arbitrary
and was imposed by the desire to allude simultaneously to the nine heavenly choirs and
the ten celestial spheres.
The scenes are central and the medallions marginal because the argument concern-
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ing the heavenly choirs is more important than the one concerning the celestial spheres.
Also the spiritual heavenly choirs are closer to God than the material celestial spheres. An
essential papalist point, much insisted upon by Boniface VIII in ‘Unam sanctam’, is that
the spiritual is above the temporal. To indicate that the spiritual choirs are on a higher
plane than the material spheres and underscore their different natures, a fictive architecture is introduced into the composition and the stories illustrated in the central scenes and
in the medallions are represented in radically different form. The central scenes are multicolored and above the architecture, while the essentially monochromatic medallions are
embedded in the architecture and in low relief. The central scenes are above the fictive
architecture because the spiritual heavenly choirs are above the material world, while the
medallions are embedded in the architecture and in low relief because the spheres and
their planets are made of matter. The gilded medallions shine like the planets but the gilding is worn to reveal their their base essence.
The Demons on the Sistine Ceiling
©2008 by Elhanan Motzkin
On the other side of the painted cornice from the ignudi, between the prophets and
the sibyls, appear pairs of bronze-colored nudes. The nudes are demons, and in each pair
the two demons are strictly symmetric. The demons are set just above the penetrations
and so directly over the ancestors of Christ in the curved triangles.
At first sight, the demons look mysterious. What exactly are they doing between the
prophets and the sibyls? Is this proximity meant to imply that the prophets and the sibyls
are in some sense satanic? Or are the demons related to the ancestors of Christ in the tri-
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angles below them? Nowhere else are demons associated either with the prophets or with
the ancestors of Christ. Why should they be so here? Or are the demons purely decorative
fancies, like the monsters in the margins of medieval manuscripts?
In fact having demons here is natural. The series of demons is an extension of the
series of ignudi, which are also composed of facing pairs, and of which the two pairs in the
bay nearest the entrance are similarly strictly symmetric. That the series of demons are an
extension of the series of ignudi can be seen from the precise location of the areas they
occupy. The thing to notice is that these areas correspond exactly to the lateral sides of the
larger central scenes, since the vertical edges bordering the areas with the demons are continuations of the upper and lower edges of the scenes. It was clearly considered indispensable for this to be precisely so, because these vertical edges cut the penetrations under the
demons in a disagreeable manner.
The reason the demons correspond exactly to the sides of the larger central scenes
is that the demons thus complete the ignudi in framing the central scenes, since strictly
speaking the ignudi frame only the narrow scenes. Above we suggested that the ignudi are
angels, and that their main function was to indicate that the central scenes have to do with
the hierarchies of angels. Now demons too are angels, albeit fallen ones. This is clearly
how the ceiling considers them, because like the ignudi the demons are nudes and appear
as symmetric pairs flanking a central element—the medallions in the case of the ignudi
and rams’ skulls in the case of the demons. The dark angels (the demons) then continue
and complete the light angels (the ignudi) in framing the central scenes. According to Alan
of Lille, the demons, which he calls anti-angels, are divided hierarchically into orders that
mirror those of the angels.1 So the demons like the ignudi refer to hierarchy, and they continue and complete the ignudi in that respect as well. The demons are on the other side of
the cornice from the ignudi because, though the angels and the demons are related and
1
Alan of Lille, ‘Treatise on the Angelic Hierarchy’ in Angelic Spirituality, translated and introduced by Steven Chase, Paulist Press, New York, 2002, pp. 197-216.
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constitute a continuous series of framing elements, the ignudi and the demons are opposites. As the ignudi are angels they are close to or in heaven, while the demons are (of
course) not.
There is another point in which the demons are in opposition to to the ignudi. The
quasi-triangular areas the demons occupy seem to call for a sitting position, and it would
have been natural for at least some of the demons to be seated. To sit however is a position
of honor, reserved to the ignudi, and consequently the demons are not seated.
Normally the demons’ hair is at rest, because the Spirit (spiritus=wind) does not
touch them, but there is an exception. There is a violent wind blowing through the hair of
the two demons to the left of ‘the Creation of Adam’. Since demons are not inspired by the
Spirit of God, this gale must be ‘la bufera infernal, che mai non resta’ of Dante’s ‘Inferno’,
Canto V, v. 31. The point of representing it here is that Adam is thus between the Spirit of
God and the Wind of Hell. Adam very properly turns to God and turns his back on Hell.
However this cannot be all there is to it, since angels are not completed by demons
in church decorations elsewhere. Like the other oddities on the ceiling, the demons express a papalist point: the demons like the ignudi refer to the Pope’s powers. In Luke 10:17
the envoys of Jesus say, ‘Domine etiam dæmonia subjiciuntur nobis in nomine tuo’ (Lord,
even the demons are subjected to us in your name). This verse was understood by the papalists to mean that the demons are subjected to to the Church and in particular to its
head, the Pope. The Church, founded ‘supra petram’, is ‘supra omnem principatum et
potestatem ut ei genua cuncta curventur cœlestium, terrestrium et infernorum’ (the
Church, founded upon Peter, is over every principality and power in Heaven, on Earth and
in Hell, so that they all bend their knee to her).1
In conformity with this the ignudi and the demons are painted as if inside the fictive architecture. So both the angels and the demons are in the power of the Church and
specifically of the Pope, since the Sistine Chapel is a papal church. The demons are as if
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imprisoned in the architecture, and there are fibers hanging from the walls behind the
demons, which, like the straps encircling the ignudi, represent the jurisdictional powers of
the Popes, for like the cloth straps the cloth fibers are attached to fictive walls. These fictive walls coincide with the real walls of the chapel, and so stand for both the Church and
the Pope. One of the points of the ignudi was that the Pope has power over the angels; one
of the points of the demons is that he has power over the demons. The demons thus reinforce the angels and complete the papal claim to universal hegemony.
To insist that the Pope had power over the demons was particularly urgent in the
early sixteenth century for practical reasons. A major source of papal revenues was the sale
of indulgences for the dead, by which the souls of the departed were released from Purgatory, and ‘in order to make money by Indulgences, Alexander [VI] claimed jurisdiction
over the other world.’2 To pay for Julius II’s ruinously expensive projects, the sale of indulgences was accelerated by Julius II in 1507 and Leo X in 1513,3 with fateful consequences. The demons on the ceiling thus unwittingly announce the proximate crisis of the
papacy, for which they were partly responsible.
Between the two demons in each pair there is a stone-colored ram’s skull. Ox-skulls
or bucrania were classical sculptured ornaments used especially on Roman altars and on
the frieze in the Roman version of the Ionic and Corinthian orders. Rams’ skulls are rarer
but are also occasionally met with during the Renaissance. Michelangelo carved rams’
skulls on the ends of the sarcophagi in the Medici Chapel in Florence, so he apparently
associated rams’ skulls with death. The rams’ skulls accord with the bronze-colored demons flanking them and provide the pairs of demons with a central element corresponding to the medallions between the pairs of ignudi. It may be that the demons and rams’
skulls also indicate that the unsaved Jews in darkness in the triangles below them are in
1
Augustinus Triumphus, ‘Summa’, Dedicatio.
Lord Acton, ‘The Borgias and their latest historian’, in ‘Selected Writings of Lord Acton’, 1985, v. 2, p.
252.
3
See Charles L. Stinger, ‘The Renaissance in Rome’, 1985 & 1998, p. 155.
2
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the shadow of death.1
The Prophets and the Sibyls on the Sistine Ceiling
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
The prophets and sibyls and the law
The main figures on the Sistine ceiling in the zone between the rectangular painted
cornice and the penetrations over the walls are twelve prophets and sibyls. Small putti
under the prophets and the sibyls display their names. The prophets are Jonah, Jeremiah,
Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Joel, and Zachariah, and the sibyls the Libyan Sibyl, the Persian
Sibyl, the Cumæan Sibyl, the Erythrean Sibyl and the Delphic Sibyl. Most of the prophets
1
See the chapter on the lunettes, the curved triangles, and the corner scenes for why the figures in the triangles represent the Jews and why they are in darkness. The ‘shadow of death’ idea is due to Thode and
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and sibyls have books or scrolls.
What do these books contain? Not the inspirations revealed to the prophets and
sibyls, because these revelations were aural or, rarely, visual. Nor are the books the ones
they wrote, because, unlike prophets and sibyls elsewhere, here the prophets and sibyls
are neither writing in the books nor displaying them. Rather they are reading. Zechariah,
Joel, the Erythrean Sibyl, the Persian Sibyl, and the Cumean Sibyl are actively reading,
and Ezekiel’s, Isaiah’s, the Delphic Sibyl’s and the Libyan Sibyl’s reading has been interrupted (Daniel, who is both reading and writing, is a special case, treated below).
This emphasis on reading rather than listening or writing seems to refer to the law.
As we noted in the section consecrated to the ignudi, Aquinas derives the Latin word for
law, ‘lex’, from ‘ligando’, to tie. But, quoting Isidore of Seville, he also says 1 that ‘lex’ comes
from ‘legendo’, to read, since the law is written: ‘Lex a legendo vocata est, quia scripta est’.
The ceiling illustrates both derivations: the ignudi illustrate ‘ligando’ by tightening and
loosing their bands, and the prophets and sibyls ‘legendo’ by reading or having just been
reading. In the case of Zechariah in particular there are additional reasons for thinking
that the book Zechariah is reading is a book of law (see below). Thus the series of prophets
and sibyls, like the wall frescoes, the central scenes and the ignudi, also contains allusions
to law.
The figures behind the prophets and sibyls
Each of the prophets and sibyls is accompanied by two figures, generally, but not
always, children. Pairs of putti or angels were often used as decorative framing elements at
the time, and on the Sistine ceiling in particular the ignudi frame the medallions in pairs
Tolnay. See Tolnay, ‘The Sistine Ceiling’, 1945, p. 77-92.
1
In ST 1-2 xc 4 ad 3.
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in precisely this way. The figures behind the prophets and sibyls however the share the
pictorial space with the prophets and sibyls they accompany, in keeping with the general
stylistic evolution. Whereas in medieval altarpieces the various figures were isolated in
separate compartments, gradually all the personages tended to be presented together in
single unified compositions. This explains why the pairs of background putti are inside the
areas allotted to the prophets and sibyls rather than outside. The number of putti is not
modified, and there are always exactly two background figures behind each prophet or
sibyl, neither more nor less.
Putti used as framing elements were sometimes winged, and in religious contexts
they were often unambiguously angels. It seems therefore likely that the putti behind the
prophets and sibyls are angels.1 Here these figures lack wings because all angels on the
ceiling lack wings. Their sharing the same areas as the prophets and the sibyls gives them
more space to move around in than if they were isolated and allows them to be even more
varied and animated than the ignudi. While some of the putti are mere spectators, others
serve as helpers and others yet act out roles associated with the prophet or sibyl in question. Their appearances are discussed in the section treating the seer they accompany.
The Prophets in general
Of the seven prophets on the ceiling, one is over the altar wall, a second over the
entrance to the chapel, and the five remaining prophets alternate with five sibyls over the
lateral walls. The seven prophets are the four Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and Daniel) and three of the Minor Prophets (Jonah, Zechariah and Joel). Like the medallions, the prophets on the ceiling are of two kinds: the ones whose location was deter-
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mined by the proximity of physical elements in the chapel, and those who were placed so
as to harmonize with neighboring painted elements. Jonah, Zechariah and Jeremiah belong to the first group and Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Joel to the second.
Jonah and Zechariah are over the altar and entrance walls, respectively. For these
two Minor Prophets to occupy these positions was an unprecedented honor. Their choice
and placing was due to papalist motives, as was the choice of the third Minor Prophet,
Joel. Papalism was also responsible for the positioning of Jeremiah and for the appearance
of Ezekiel. We discuss first Jonah and Zechariah and then the other prophets. These are,
in order, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Joel.
Jonah: the resurrected Christ preaching to the world
and the universal jurisdiction of the Pope
Jonah is the most prominent prophet on the ceiling. He occupies the place of honor
over the altar wall and is larger than all the other prophets. Indeed he is the largest figure
in the whole chapel. He turns his face upward, his mouth is open, his feet are raised, and
his clothing is minimal. In all this he differs from the other prophets, who are all warmly
covered with heavy drapery and have both feet set firmly on the ground. Jonah rises towards his left, points to his right and back with his left hand, and indicates with his right
hand yet another direction.
The prominence of Jonah is very curious and rare. In no other church decoration of
the Middle Ages or Renaissance is Jonah so central. The first questions that come to mind
concerning the figure of Jonah on the ceiling are first, why is Jonah so important here?
And second, what do Jonah’s gestures and appearance signify?
1
They cannot be genii representing opposing principles, as Tolnay suggested, because instead of being contrasted and/or fighting with each other they sometimes look alike and they always help each other out.
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The usual interpretation of the figure of Jonah is that it stands for resurrection. Jesus compared Jonah’s sojourn inside the whale and subsequent expulsion therefrom to his
own death and resurrection (Matt 12:40), and Jonah was consequently often used on early
Christian sarcophagi and catacomb wall paintings as a symbol for resurrection. He also
appears occasionally in medieval and Renaissance religious art in connection with resurrection. So to say that here too Jonah represents resurrection sounds plausible.
Nevertheless, this explanation of why Jonah is so central is insufficient, for several
reasons. First, only here is Jonah so extraordinarily prominent. If Jonah’s connection with
resurrection is a sufficient reason for his prominence here, then it should be a sufficient
reason for his being prominent elsewhere. The theme of resurrection is a common one in
Christian art, since the resurrection of Christ is the central tenet of the Christian religion
and the general resurrection at the end of time an article of faith. If at the time Jonah was
identified so exclusively with resurrection, then Jonah should appear often and be equally
prominent in other medieval and Renaissance church decorations. But in fact there are
relatively few representations of Jonah about, and only in the Sistine Chapel is Jonah so
enormous and central.
The second problem with identifying the ceiling Jonah exclusively with resurrection is that Jonah’s gestures are not, so far as one can see, related to resurrection. What
they do signify has not so far been satisfactorily explained, but up to now no one has
claimed that they express resurrection. And if Jonah’s gestures express something other
than resurrection, then here the figure of Jonah cannot refer only to resurrection and must
necessarily also mean something else.
Here we will argue that the reasons for Jonah’s unique prominence and unique appearance are related, and are due to a unique concurrence of circumstances. First we show
that the figure of Jonah on the Sistine ceiling illustrates St. Jerome’s commentary on the
book of Jonah, according to which Jonah represents the resurrected Christ preaching to
the world to convert it. The ceiling Jonah thus stands not just for resurrection but more
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specifically for the conversion of the Gentiles. Then we explain why this theme was evoked
in so emphatic a fashion in the Sistine Chapel at this particular date.
The Book of Jonah contains four chapters. In the first chapter Jonah flees from
God’s command to go warn the Ninevites of their impending doom, and is swallowed up
by a great fish. In the second chapter Jonah prays to God from inside the fish and the fish
vomits him out. In the third chapter Jonah does go and preach to the Ninevites, who repent and are spared. In the fourth chapter, Jonah, who disapproves of God’s mercy, is first
provided with and then deprived of a shade-giving tree.
On the ceiling Jonah is shown as he was at the beginning of the third chapter,
when, having been spat out by the fish (i.e., resurrected), he sets out to go preach to the
Ninevites (i.e., the non-Jews). This can be seen by his appearance and by his gestures.
First his appearance. On the ceiling Jonah is represented leaning back, young, and
minimally dressed. This is close to the way he is depicted on the sarcophagi, where he is
prone, young and nude. On the sarcophagi Jonah stands for resurrection, and he is shown
as he was at the moment of the story that signifies his resurrection, that is, when he came
out of the whale. On the sarcophagi Jonah is nude because resurrection is related to nudity: one is born nude and resurrection is a second birth. The ceiling Jonah is not quite
nude, but almost: his prominently, almost aggressively foreshortened legs are entirely
bare, and the allusion to nudity is clear if one compares his minimal clothing with the
plentiful drapery covering the other prophets.
On the sarcophagi Jonah is young and beardless, and on the ceiling Jonah is likewise young and beardless. Also the whales of the sarcophagi are long, narrow, and wiggly,
and on the ceiling the whale behind Jonah is similarly long, narrow, and wiggly, and very
unlike an actual whale. So it would seem that on the ceiling the physical appearance of
Jonah was not inconsiderably inspired by the physical appearance of Jonah on the sarcophagi. Since on the sarcophagi Jonah stands for resurrection, the ceiling Jonah too must
be related to resurrection.
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The Sistine Chapel is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, and when the ceiling was painted the altar painting was a fresco on the altar wall by Perugino that represented the Assumption. Being over the altar wall, Jonah harmonized with Perugino’s Assumption then below it by referring to resurrection, since the Assumption was seen as
closely related to resurrection, almost a variant.1
The Sistine Jonah was certainly understood by other artists as related to resurrection, because they copied his posture and attitude when painting or sculpting figures having to do with resurrection. Thus in Sebastiano del Piombo’s the Raising of Lazarus in
London the posture of Lazarus repeats that of Jonah in in every detail: Lazarus’s posture is
an almost exact mirror image of that of Jonah. Lazarus and Jonah are both seated; they
are both scantily dressed; Lazarus turns his face upwards and to the right, and Jonah
turns his upwards and to the left; Lazarus extends his right arm diagonally across his body
to the left, and Jonah extends his left arm diagonally across his body to the right; Lazarus’
left leg is lifted higher than his right, and Jonah’s right leg is lifted higher than his left.
According to Vasari, Sebastiano’s painting was executed with Michelangelo’s help and under his supervision, so Michelangelo too considered that the figure of Jonah on the ceiling
was related to resurrection.
Another artist who used Jonah’s appearance for a figure linked with resurrection
was Bernini. The funerary Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo contains statues, due to
various sculptors, of prophets related to resurrection. Bernini’s Habakkuk is modeled after
the Sistine Jonah, and again the orientation is reversed. Both Jonah and Habakkuk are
seated and both turn their faces upward: Jonah faces upward and to his right, Habakkuk
faces upward and to his left. Jonah stretches out his left arm diagonally across his body to
his right, and Habakkuk stretches out his right arm diagonally across his body to his left.
Jonah lifts his right foot off the ground and Habakkuk lifts his left foot. So for Bernini too
1
In the contemporary Chigi funerary chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, for example, the implied sense of the
Assumption of the Virgin planned by Raphael is resurrection (see Shearman, op. cit.).
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Jonah’s appearance has to do with resurrection.
Jonah’s gestures however show that he was not meant to represent resurrection in
general or even the resurrection of Christ in general, but rather a specific aspect of the
resurrected Christ insisted on by St. Jerome in his treatise on Jonah. There was little
choice in the matter. We said that Jonah appears relatively infrequently in religious art
after the early Christian period. Religious writing exhibited the same lack of interest, and
even Savonarola, who was obsessed by the Old Testament and preached whole cycles on
other Minor—sometimes very Minor—Prophets, did not consecrate a single full sermon to
Jonah.1 St. Jerome’s treatise was by far the most prestigious discussion of Jonah in the
west (the east was more interested). So, as possible inspirations for the image of Jonah
there were the early Christian sarcophagi and catacomb paintings on the one hand and St.
Jerome’s booklet on the other. The ceiling follows the sarcophagi as regards Jonah’s youth
and semi-nudity. It follows Jerome as regards his gestures.
While in the first chapter Jonah refused to go to Nineveh, in the third chapter he
does so with alacrity. St. Jerome’s proof for this is that he covers a normal three days’
march in one day: ‘Ninive erat civitas magna itinere trium dierum. Et coepit Jonas introire
in civitatem itinere diei unius’ (Jon 3:4-5). The ceiling illustrates this alacrity by showing
Jonah with his feet already raised to go before knowing where he is going. God says to Jonah, ‘Surge et vade’ (‘rise and go’) and he does: ‘Et surrexit Jonah et abiit’.1
By raising his feet off the ground, alone of all the prophets, Jonah also accords with
the idea of resurrection. ‘Surrexit’ suggests ‘resurrexit’, and in fact the resurrected are
most often represented as stepping up. Both Matthew and Luke associate rising with the
resurrection when they state that the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba will rise at the
resurrection.
St. Jerome’s interpretation of Jonah was that he represented the conversion of the
1
It follows from this that the program could not have been inspired by Savonarola, as is sometimes asserted.
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Gentiles as well as resurrection. The Ninevites were non-Jews, and to show that Nineveh
stands for the non-Jews in general, Jerome calls Nineveh the City of the Gentiles, ‘civitas
gentium’.2 Jonah’s purpose in preaching to the Ninevites was to obtain their conversion,
and the conversion of Nineveh represents the conversion of the Gentiles.3 This interpretation of Jonah is in strict conformity with the actual words of Jesus.
Everyone agrees that the figure of Jonah on the ceiling refers to the sign of Jonah
the Prophet mentioned by Jesus when answering the scribes and Pharisees who asked him
for a sign (i.e., a proof by a miracle). But what exactly is the sign of Jonah? Usually this
sign is understood to be the resurrection, because Jesus compared his own death and resurrection to Jonah’s passing three days and three nights in the belly of the whale (Mat
12:40). However if we look more closely at what Jesus says, we see that for Jesus Jonah,
who was the only prophet sent to the non-Jews, also represents the conversion of the Gentiles.
Jesus’ answer to the scribes and Pharisees is recorded slightly differently by Matthew and by Luke. Matthew 12:39-42 reads:
Generatio mala et adultera signum quærit, et signum non dabitur ei nisi signum Jonae prophetae. Sicut enim fuit Jonas in ventre ceti tribus diebus et tribus
noctibus, sic erit filius hominis in cordae terrae tribus diebus et tribus noctibus. Viri Ninivitae surgent in judicio cum generatione ista et condemnabunt eam, quia
pœnitentia egerunt in prædicatione Jonae, et ecce plus quam Jonas hic. Regina
Austri surget in judicio cum generatione ista et condemnabit eam, quia venit a finibus terrae audire sapientiam Salomonis, et ecce plus quam Salomon hic.
1
Jon 3:2-3.
Commentary on Jonah 4:9.
3
This is also the view of Clement of Alexandria (in Protrept. X, 99, 4), Cyril of Alexandria (in ‘In Ionam’
(PG 71, 597-638)) and Theodoret of Cyr (in ‘In Ionam’ (PG 81 1719-1740)).
2
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Luke 11:29-32 says:
Generatio haec generatio nequam est, signum quærit et signum non dabitur
eam nisi signum Jonae prophetae. Nam sicut fuit Jonas signum Ninivitis, ita erit et
filius hominis generationi isti. Regina Austri surget in judicio cum viris generatione
hujus et condemnabit illos, quia venit a finibus terrae audie sapientiam Salomonis,
et ecce plus quam Salomon hic. Viri Ninivitae surgent in judicio cum generatione
hac et condemnabunt illam, quia pœnitentiam egerunt ad prædicationem Jonae, et
ecce plus quam Jonas hic.
The main difference between the text in Luke and the text in Matthew is that Luke
leaves out Matthew’s comparison between Jonah’s sojourn inside the whale and Jesus’
death and resurrection. Furthermore Luke interprets the sign of Jonah as being Jonah
himself and says that Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, that is, the non-Jews. Jonah was
the only prophet sent to non-Jews, who, after hearing him preach, promptly repented, i.e.,
converted. The Queen of Sheba is associated with Jonah both in Matthew and in Luke to
underline this missionary aspect. The Queen of Sheba was regarded as symbolizing the
conversion of the Gentiles because ‘she came from the ends of the earth to hear the Wisdom of Solomon’. There is no other connection between the Queen of Sheba and Jonah
besides this common reference to the conversion of the Gentiles: the story of the Queen of
Sheba does not mention Jonah, nor is the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the book of Jonah. By coupling Jonah with the Queen of Sheba, Jesus showed that for him Jonah had to
do with the conversion of the Gentiles. Jesus’ point in predicting that the Ninevites and
the Queen of Sheba will judge his generation at the resurrection was that God prefers even
foreigners (provided naturally that they convert to Judaism) to the hypocritical scribes
and Pharisees. So for Jesus the Ninevites represent the conversion of the Gentiles and Jonah is the sign sent to them by God.
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The interpretation of the sign of Jonah as signifying God’s turning to the Gentiles
was well understood in the Renaissance, since Savonarola said that Jonah was the sign of
God turning from the Jews to the Gentiles: ‘Jonas fuit signo reliquendi Iudeos et ad Gentiles transeundi’.1 Apparently for him this was the primary meaning of the sign of Jonah,
since he does not mention the usual linkage with resurrection.
Here we have the key to what Jonah’s attitude and gestures were intended to convey. Jonah’s attitude and gestures may seem puzzling, and indeed all sorts of explanations
have been suggested for them. Once we realize that Jonah stands for the conversion of the
Gentiles through missionary effort, their meaning becomes evident: Jonah is going off in
all directions to spread the good word. He turns his face upwards to receive the message
he is to transmit. To spread God’s word he opens his mouth, and to express ‘all directions’,
he indicates all directions at once: he rises to the left while pointing right and forwards
with one arm and right and backwards with the other.
To allow Jonah to express ‘all directions’ he appears without a book or a scroll.
Normally the other prophets on the ceiling have one or the other, but for Jonah to hold a
book or a scroll would have meant that he would have had only one hand available for indicating ‘all directions’. It is not possible to indicate ‘all directions’ with only one hand,
and since the concept ‘all directions’ was essential to the meaning of the image, the usual
book or scroll was omitted. The absence of a book also implies that Jonah’s message does
not concern the written law, and is so not directed at the Jews.
In his commentary on Jonah 3:4, St. Jerome says that Christ is the true Jonah, sent
to preach to the world: ‘Dominus verus Jona missus ad praedicationem mundi’. Jonah
preached to Nineveh alone, but Christ preached to the whole world. By pointing in all directions, the figure of Jonah on the ceiling illustrates Christ’s mission rather than Jonah’s.
So Jonah is not simply the resurrected Christ but rather the resurrected Christ preaching
1
See Rab Hatfield, ‘Trust in God’, in Wallace, op. cit., note 118.
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to the world.
Christ’s preaching to the world after his resurrection was effectuated through the
ministry of the Apostles. ‘Dominus autem noster proprie post inferos consurgere dicitur et
verbum Dominum praedicare quando mittit apostolos ut baptizent eos qui erant in Ninive
in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti’ (‘Our Lord especially after rising from the underworld is said to preach the word of God when he sent the Apostles to baptize those who
were in Nineveh in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost’).1
To underline that the ceiling Jonah expresses preaching to and converting the Gentiles, the figure of Jonah resembles the Apostle called by Boniface VIII ‘the Apostle’, i.e.,
Paul. The Prophet Jonah and the Apostle Paul are closely related: Jonah was the only
prophet sent to the Gentiles, and Paul, whose appellation was Apostle of the Gentiles, was
the only apostle sent specifically to the Gentiles; the mission of both was to preach to and
convert them; and both are associated with a long sea voyage and a seastorm.
The ceiling Jonah resembles Paul at the moment of his own conversion. Jonah is
young and barefaced, he is leaning backwards while facing upwards, his legs are bare, and
he has on a tight-fitting tunic sometimes worn by soldiers.2 Now while the older Paul is
normally represented as bald and with a long black beard, at his conversion Paul is usually
depicted as a young and beardless soldier leaning backward and facing upwards. He is
shown thus in the Sistine Chapel tapestry of the conversion of Paul designed by Raphael.
Michelangelo’s Jonah has on an armor-like upper garment with shoulder straps and a
loose cloth that overflows from under the straps, and all this is also true of Raphael’s Paul.
References to Paul are especially fitting in the Sistine Chapel because, besides being Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul was a co-founder of the papacy and so represents the papacy almost as much as Peter. Indeed, of the ten tapestries intended for the lower level of the
1
Jerome, commentary on Jonah 3:3. Here Jerome explicitly identifies the Ninevites with the Gentiles and
preaching to the Ninevites with baptizing the Gentiles.
2
For example by some soldiers in Michelangelo’s fresco of the conversion of Paul in the Pauline Chapel.
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walls of the Chapel four are consecrated to Peter and six to Paul.1
We now turn to the question of why the proselytizing and conversion of the Gentiles occupies such a central position on the Sistine ceiling. The reason is that the proselytizing and conversion of the heathens was of great importance to the papacy at the time,
since it was taken both to prove and to justify the universal jurisdiction of the Pope.
At the time the ceiling was painted the proselytizing and conversion of the heathens was a topical question very much on the papacy’s mind. The recent discovery of
America had revealed the existence of masses of hitherto unsuspected heathens, ripe for
conversion, and missionaries had to be formed for this purpose. So the size and centrality
of Jonah reflect an important item on the current religious agenda.
But besides the purely religious aspect, the issue of the conversion of the heathens
also had momentous political implications. For the religious question was intimately connected to an urgent political problem: who possessed the legal authority to dispose of
these heathens and their lands? The papalists had no doubts about the matter. It was the
Pope who held ultimate jurisdiction over the pagans. Innocent IV said2 that ‘bene tamen
credimus quod papa, qui est vicarius Jesu Christi, potestatem habeat non tantum super
Christianos, sed etiam super omnes Infideles’. That is, ‘we believe that the Pope, who is the
Vicar of Christ, has power not only over the Christians, but even over all unbelievers’. And
Augustinus of Ancona argued3 similarly that since Christ possesses jurisdiction over the
entire world, the Pope as his vicar inherits his powers.
This claim was by no means considered as anachronistic or merely theoretical at
the time. Spain and Portugal, the two countries most actively engaged in overseas exploration, eagerly sought papal grants of heathen territories. In 1454 Pope Nicolas V gave Guinea to Portugal, and this donation was confirmed by his successor Calixtus III. Ferdinand
1
2
3
The one with the stoning of Stephen is a part of the Paul sequence, as Paul was one of the lapidators.
In the decretal ’Quod super’ (fol. 176v, n. 4).
In ‘Summa de ecclesiastica potestate’ Q 23 1c.
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and Isabella of Spain asked Alexander VI to award the lands Columbus discovered to
Spain, and the Pope published several bulls concerning the disposition of these heathen
areas. In the famous ‘Inter cætera’ of May 4, 1493, he divided all the newly found heathen
territories between Spain and Portugal. In 1494 Spain and Portugal modified the demarcation line by the Treaty of Tordesillas; but papal assent was felt to be necessary for the treaty to be valid, and Spain and Portugal asked Alexander VI to approve it, which he did. The
Portuguese then asked Julius II to confirm the treaty formally, and this was done in 1506
in the bull ‘Ea quae’. The Portuguese obtained further clarifications favorable to them
from Leo X in the bull ‘Præcelsae devotionis’ of 1514. In all, the Popes issued more than a
hundred bulls and briefs concerning the lands of the heathens.1 In other words: 1. That the
Pope held ultimate jurisdiction over the heathens was undisputed, and 2. Who may take
over the heathens and their lands was a real and present political question repeatedly
submitted to the Pope for his consideration and judgment throughout this period.
These distributions of foreign territories had to be justified legally and morally. In
the early fifteenth century the conquests of the Portuguese in Africa were regarded as a
continuation of the crusades by other means. This changed, and Alexander VI explained,
first, why he thought he had the power to dispose of the pagans and their lands, and, second, to what end he awarded these areas to Spain and Portugal. In ‘Inter cætera’ he proclaimed that the Pope has the power to donate (the word used) the territories of the pagans ‘by virtue of the authority of Almighty God conferred on the blessed Peter, and by
right of the vicariate of Jesus Christ that the Pontiff exercises on earth.’
The purpose and justification of the donation of the heathen lands to Spain and
Portugal was stated at the beginning of the first bull published by the Pope on the subject,
on May 3, 1493. It was converting the heathens. The text runs, ‘… ut fides catholica et
christiana religio, nostris præsertim temporibus, exaltetur ac ubilibet amplietur et di-
1
See A. García Gallo, ‘Las Bulas de Alejandro VI y el ordenamiento jurídico de la expansion portuguesa y
castellana en África y Indias’, in the Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, vol. 27-28, p. 633s.
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latetur, … barbaricae nationes deprimantur et ad fidem ipsam reducantur’.1 (‘So that in
our time especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion may be exalted, enlarged
and increased everywhere, … the barbaric nations lowered and brought over to the said
faith’).
According to the Pope the intended purpose of the voyages of discovery was the
conversion to Christianity of non-Christians: ‘… vos dudum animum proposueratis aliquas
insulas et terras firmas remotas et incognitas ac per alios hactenus non repertas quaerere
et invenire, ut illarum incolas et habitatores ad colendum redemptorem nostrum et fidem
catholicam profitendum reduceritis…’ (‘…You have for a long time intended to seek out
and discover certain remote and unknown islands and mainlands not found by others up
to now, so that you might bring their dwellers and inhabitants over to honoring our Redeemer and professing the Catholic faith…’)
To this end the Pope orders (!) the Spanish sovereigns to send missionaries to
proselytize the natives: ‘… Mandamus vobis in virtute sanctæ obedientiæ … ad terras firmas et insulas praedictas viros probos et Deum timentes, doctos, peritos et expertos ad
instruendum incolas et habitatores praefatos in fide catholica et bonis moribus imbuendum destinare debeatis…’. That is, ‘…We order you that you should send to the abovementioned mainlands and islands honest and God-fearing men, learned, skilled and experienced to instruct the above-designated dwellers and inhabitants in the Catholic faith and
imbue them with good morals…’
Proselytizing and converting the heathens thus had a political content, and were
used by the Pope to justify his exercising the powers that papalist theory vested in him to
distribute real territories to real states. These states accepted both the Pope’s decisions
and the papalist reasoning on which they were based. This constituted a resounding diplomatic and political success for the papacy and a great vindication of papalist doctrine,
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worthy of being celebrated in the Sistine Chapel. The occasion to do so effectively presented itself soon afterwards, when, perhaps not coincidentally, the chapel had its ceiling repainted. By referring to the proselytizing and conversion of the heathens, the figure of Jonah recalls this triumph. By means of its central location and imposing size it glorifies it.
The figure of Jonah thus serves a current political end.2
Jonah’s personal appearance fits well the great voyages of discovery. Jonah is
fresh, youthful, energetic, and adventurous. He looks up not only to God for guidance but
to the stars to determine in which direction to sail. He rises (literally) to the challenge of
the new age and is off to discover and conquer the earth. He personifies what used to be
called the spirit of the Renaissance. The spirit of the Renaissance may be a nineteenthcentury construct, but it is a powerful invention, and it finds its incarnation in Michelangelo’s Jonah.
To resume: Jonah refers to the proselytizing and conversion of the Gentiles as well
as to resurrection, and his prominence constitutes a political statement that forms a part
of the general thesis of the ceiling and at the same time reflects current political concerns.
The general thesis of the ceiling is the universal primacy of the Pope, and the rest of the
ceiling argues that the Pope is above the temporal rulers and above the General Council.
Jonah is so central in the Sistine Chapel because he alludes to the universal jurisdiction of
the Pope over and beyond his primacy in Christendom. His prominence also expresses the
1
See Mirbt, Text 410, p. 246f.
2
In fact, who is to say that this great diplomatic success of the papacy was not at the root of the Renaissance
Popes’ megalomania, which led them to spend the papacy into the ground? As is well known, to finance
Julius II’s architectural extravaganzas, Julius II and Leo X were forced to sell indulgences on a massive
scale, thus precipitating the Reformation. There may thus be a chain of causal relationships linking the discovery of America to the Reformation: After this discovery, the Pope divided the newly found territories
between Spain and Portugal, thus proving that his jurisdictional powers over the entire earth were real and
not merely theoretical. In keeping with this universal and now universally recognized over-lordship, he had
to have the greatest and most magnificent buildings in the world. Hence the rebuilding of St. Peter’s on an
unparalleled scale. Hence the indulgences. Hence the Reformation. The missing link in this chain is a proof
that the Popes attached such importance to their partitions of the lands of the heathens. The Sistine Jonah
may well constitute such a proof. The central, enormous Jonah of the Sistine Chapel is clearly important. If
my theory that the figure of Jonah alludes to the jurisdiction of the Pope over the heathens is correct, then its
location and size show that the Popes thought that this jurisdiction and the partitions decided in its name were
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satisfaction of the papacy at seeing this jurisdiction recognized so spectacularly.
In earler and later decorations in the Vatican Jonah is less conspicuous because
only now was the conversion of the Gentiles so immediately relevent and useful as a justification and proof of the Pope’s jurisdiction over the heathens and hence of papal supremacy. And Jonah does not have the same preeminence outside the Vatican, only appearing
as one prophet among others of the resurrection, because outside the Vatican there was
never much interest evinced in this (or any other) aspect of papalist theory.
The papal claims to universal jurisdiction were already expressed on the ceiling by
the importance accorded to Noah and by God laying down the law to Adam in the fourth
Genesis scene. So the centrality of Jonah develops a theme already central on the ceiling.
We now have the answer to one of our initial questions, why are Noah and Jonah so prominent here, and only here? The reason turns out to be the same: both Noah and Jonah refer to the universal jurisdiction of the Pope. Jonah and Noah are so prominent here because the universal jurisdiction of the Pope is of interest to the Pope. Jonah and Noah are
not so prominent elsewhere because the universal jurisdiction of the Pope is of interest
only to the Pope.
The background behind Jonah contains the usual two figures and illustrates other
episodes in the Book of Jonah. A male angel, aided by ‘a great wind’, tries to stop Jonah
from running away from his duty, and a female angel directs ‘a great fish’ towards him.
The plant on the left is the castor-oil tree which grew overnight to provide him
with shade and which withered as quickly. The plant is directly over Jonah, since Jonah’s
head is in its shadow. This plant is also known as ‘palma Christi’, so Jonah has a figurative
hand (‘palma’) of Christ over him. Palms are a symbol of triumph. The implied meaning
then of the scene is that the word of Christ will triumph and cover the whole earth.
Other explanations have been proposed for the prominence and appearance of Jo-
very important. It follows that while saying that the discovery of America caused the Reformation may be
going too far, it is possible that without the discovery of America the Reformation would not have occurred.
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nah. It has been suggested that Jonah is so central here because Peter was a fisher of men
and Jonah has a connection with the sea. It has also been suggested that the fact that Peter’s father’s name was Jonah may have something to do with it. But if the name Jonah
was regarded as having a peculiarly papal consonance one would expect to find references
to Jonah all over the Vatican, which is not the case. The basic trouble with all such explanations is that they are too general. If Jonah is so prominent only here and at this time, he
must refer to some allusion that was present only here and at this time.1
Zechariah: Elucidating the Law of God to the Jews
and the primacy of the Pope within the Church
Though a minor prophet, Zechariah was awarded a major location on the ceiling,
over the entrance. Zechariah is thus directly opposite Jonah over the altar wall. Zechariah
was placed opposite Jonah because he represents the complement of what Jonah represents. Jonah refers to the preaching to and conversion of the Gentiles and asserts the universal jurisdiction of the Pope. Zechariah represents the preaching of the law of God to the
Jews and alludes to the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope within the Church.
What Zechariah is doing and what his facial expression is meant to convey can be
deduced from the stair he is treading on. This stair is of wood. In the book of Nehemiah,
Zechariah, along with other people, is described as standing beside Ezra on a wooden stair
that Ezra had made to speak from: ‘Stettit autem Esdras scriba super gradum ligneum
quod fecerat ad loquendam; et stetterunt juxta eum […] Zacharia, etc.’ (Neh 8:4). (‘Gradus’, like ‘stair’ in English, means both an individual stair and a staircase.1) Ezra’s companions on the wooden stair then ‘read in the book of the laws of God distinctly and openly
1
In addition to the contemporary allusions mentioned above, another may be to the order of the theologian
who drew up the program (see the section on ‘Who drew up the program of the Sistine Ceiling?’ below).
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to be understood; and they understood as it was read’: ‘Et legerunt in libro legis Dei distincte et aperte ad intelligendum; et intellexerunt cum legeretur.’ (Neh 8:8). Which suggests that understanding the book of laws of God required a certain effort.
On the ceiling Zechariah is stepping on a wooden stair, and by turning sideways he
displays the stair and underlines its importance. He is reading in an old and worn book,
which he opens in both senses, since his open mouth shows that he is speaking. The expression on his face is of someone making an effort to understand. All these details fit the
text in Nehemiah.
Zechariah rather than Ezra is represented over the entrance because Ezra was a
scribe and not a prophet, and so could not be included in the series of prophets. Instead
his companion Zechariah, who was a prophet and also present and a participant when
Ezra and his companions read out the newly redacted law of God to the people, was chosen to represent the teaching of the law of God to the people. On this occasion the priests
and the Levites, that is, the Church, read out and interpreted the law of God to the people
of God. So the ceiling Zechariah suggests, in Christian terms, that saying and interpreting
the divine law is the province of the Church.
It has been noted several times that Zechariah is systematically contrasted with
Jonah across from him at the other end of the ceiling, and that visually they are opposites.
Thus Jonah is the largest prophet on the ceiling and Zechariah the smallest. Jonah is
young, and Zechariah old. Jonah has sleek, clean-shaven cheeks and a full head of dark
hair, and Zechariah has a clean-shaven pate and a long white beard (the longest in the
chapel). Jonah is very lightly clad (he has fewer clothes on than any other prophet), and
Zechariah is covered with heavy drapery (heavier than that of any other prophet’s). Jonah
has no book or scroll, and Zechariah is interested only in his dilapidated codex, which is as
old and worn as he is. The codex being so old and worn underlines Zechariah’s great age
1
To preach from a wooden staircase is still the universal practice in Islam.
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and reciprocally Zechariah great age underlines the worn-out aspect of the codex.
By stepping downward Zechariah participates in the general downward movement
at the entrance end of the chapel: in the Drunkenness of Noah, Noah faces and points
downward, and in the ninth medallion Antiochus falls down to earth. Across at the opposite end of the chapel, by facing and moving upward Jonah participates in the general upward movement near the altar wall: in the Separation of Light from Darkness God faces
and flies upward and in the first medallion Elijah rises to heaven.
These oppositions accord with the interpretation of Jonah and Zechariah as repressenting the evangelization of the Gentiles on the one hand and the teaching of the law
to Jews on the other. From the Christian perspective the evangelization of the Gentiles was
the end purpose and teleological cause of the teaching of the law of God to the Jews that
preceded it. So since the Gentiles are the future and the Jews are the past, Jonah is in the
front and Zechariah in the back of the chapel, Jonah is young and Zechariah old, and Jonah steps upwards and Zechariah downward. Zechariah sees nothing but his book, which
he does not really understand, while Jonah sees God without a book, directly. Zechariah is
well covered to show that in the Old Law truth was concealed, and Jonah has few clothes
on to show that under the New Dispensation truth is unveiled.
All this is standard Christian apologetics. Here Jonah and Zechariah personify the
opposition because here it is not the usual contrast of Synagogue and Church but rather
the teaching of the written law to the Jews and the evangelization of the Gentiles. In the
Sistine Chapel the titles over the wall frescoes express the same point: the titles on the left
wall mention the ‘lex scripta’ (written law) rather than the ‘Old Law’ or just ‘Law’ and the
ones on the right the ‘lex evangelica’ (evangelical law) rather than the ‘New Law’ or
‘Grace’. Accordingly Zechariah has a book with the written law, and a bookless Jonah sets
out to evangelize the world.
The Book of Zechariah is the longest of the Minor Prophets and contains many and
varied texts. Zechariah could thus have been depicted in many ways. By choosing to illus-
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trate him by the text in Nehemiah describing the reading aloud and interpreting of the law
of God, the ceiling again shows that, like the walls, its primordial interest is the divine law.
And Jonah and Zechariah stand for the two complementary aspects of the teaching of the
law on opposite ends of the ceiling just as the two complementary aspects of the revealed
law are illustrated on opposite walls.
There was a more direct reason why Zechariah was placed over the entrance. Zechariah is particularly important from the papalist point of view because according to him
God bestowed upon the High Priest Jesus jurisdiction over the House of God and guardianship over its ‘atria’. In Ze 3:7 the angel of God says to the High Priest: ‘Haec dicit Dominus exercituum: Si in viis meis ambulaveris, et custodiam meis custodieris, tu quoque judicabis domum meam, et cusodies atria mea’ That is, ‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: If you
walk in my ways and guard my watches, you will judge my house and guard my entrance
courts’. The High Priest’s name, Jesus, recalls that according to Heb. Ch. 5-7 Christ was a
High Priest, and that hence the Pope is the successor of Christ, since the Pope is the present High Priest. ‘My house and entrance courts’ are the Temple and its approaches. The
Temple prefigures the Church, and the approaches to the Church are all Christendom.
This verse then implies that God gave the Pope jurisdiction over the Church and over
Christendom. Zechariah thus completes Jonah, who at the other end of the Chapel alludes
to the universal jurisdiction of the Pope outside Christendom. Zechariah is over the entrance because ‘atria’ means both entrances and entrance courts. To illustrate the condition, ‘if you walk in my ways’, Zechariah is depicted walking.
The other prophets
With Jonah and Zechariah occupying the ceiling areas between the penetrations
over the altar and the entrance walls, there remained ten slots to be filled over the lateral
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walls. These were assigned to five prophets and five sibyls, with the prophets and sibyls
alternating.
The first four prophets (beginning as usual at the altar end) are the four Major
Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Having the four Major Prophets in the
first four slots seems unexceptionable, and requires no comment. But the order in which
these prophets appear on the ceiling is unusual. It is not the order in which they appear in
the Vulgate. In the Vulgate the order is as above, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, while
on the ceiling it is: Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah. The order of the Vulgate was
modified so that the prophets might harmonize with their surroundings in the chapel, and
Jeremiah begins the series because his slot is immediately over the papal throne.
Jeremiah
Jeremiah was placed directly over the Pope’s throne because a major argument in
favor of papal primacy, repeated over and over by the papalists, was that God said to Jeremiah, ‘Ecce constitui te hodie super gentes et super regna’ (Jer 1:10). This translates as:
‘This day I have placed thee over the nations and over the kingdoms’. Jeremiah was a
priest (Jer 1:1), and this verse was supposed to show that God placed the Church over the
temporal rulers. Thus Boniface VIII says in ‘Unam sanctam’: ‘Sic de ecclesia et ecclesiastica potestate verificatur vaticinium Ieremiae prophetae: “Ecce constitui te hodie super gente et regna” et cetera quae sequuntur.’ That is: ‘Thus the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah, “Today I have put you over the nations and the kingdoms”, etc., is verified by the
Church and the power of the Church.’ Since the Pope is head of the Church, it follows that
the Pope is over the nations and the kingdoms. Alvarus Pelagius consequently says that
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Jeremiah was a ‘type’ of the Pope, ‘Hieremias autem sacerdos fuit typus Papae’.1
Jeremiah has a long white beard, and Julius II also had a long white beard. Julius
II grew his beard in late 1510, and the figure of Jeremiah must have been painted later,
since the ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512 from back to front, and Jeremiah is at
the altar end of the chapel. Jeremiah’s beard may thus be in honor of the Pope just below
him. The rumor at the time was that Julius II grew his beard as a sign of sorrow, 2 and sorrow is certainly the expression Jeremiah’s physiognomy is intended to convey. But Jeremiah’s appearance has a further meaning. The figure of Jeremiah was placed over the
Pope’s throne to indicate that the Pope was over the nations and over the kingdoms. Jeremiah’s long white beard may have been intended to suggest more specifically that the
similarly bearded Julius II below Jeremiah was personally over the nations and over the
kingdoms.
Jeremiah’s attitude and expression illustrate his well-known sadness over the Jews’
exile to Babylon. The Book of Lamentations laments the exile of the Jews to Babylon, and
the Vulgate, like the Septuagint, attributed the Book of Lamentations to Jeremiah. Jeremiah was therefore traditionally represented as sad and brooding. The two figures behind
Jeremiah similarly allude to exile: one looks even more tragic than Jeremiah, and the other is setting out on a long and difficult journey.
Daniel
The second Major Prophet on the ceiling is Daniel. Daniel is writing something in
small book while looking at a large one held up by an angel. The large book is the book
mentioned in Dan 12:1 as containing the names of those who will be saved on the Day of
Judgment: ‘Et in tempore illo salvabitur populus tuus omnis qui inventus fuerit scriptus in
1
2
See Alvarus Pelagius, ed. Rocaberti, p. 296.
See E. Rodocanachi, ‘Le Pontificat de Jules II’, Paris 1928, p. 125-6.
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libro’ (Dan 12:1). The figure of Daniel here refers then to the Last Judgment. This is why
Daniel’s expression is so stern and grave.
Daniel is not copying the names of the saved (for him to be copying the names the
small book would have to be as big as the big one) but rather witnessing and noting down
the existence of the book with the names of the saved. The large book is held open to show
Daniel that it contains these names. Now the large book before Daniel is open while the
book with the names of the saved is supposed to be sealed until the Day of Judgment. This
is not a contradiction, because the wording in the Vulgate is, ‘Signa librum usque ad tempus statutum’ (Dan 12:4). So the sense in which the book with the names of the saved is
sealed is not that it is hermetically closed but that it will be signed with a seal. That at any
rate was how the ceiling interpreted this verse, because the seal with which the book will
be signed (or sealed) is hanging behind the book-rest.
The putto behind Daniel illustrates the verse: ‘Et multi de his qui dormiunt in terræ
pulvere evigilabunt, alii in vita æternam, et alii in opprobrium ut videant semper’ (Dan
12:2). That is, ‘And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awaken, some to
eternal life, and others to shame that they shall see always’. The putto is waking up from
his sleep of death. His shroud envelops his head but it has been pulled back from his face.
The face is covered with the dust of the earth in which the putto was sleeping. Apparently
this putto has woken to see shame always, because he is hiding his head under his shroud.
Daniel is located under the Genesis scene representing God separating the waters.
The papalist meaning of that scene is that it alludes to God’s, and hence to the Pope’s, role
as supreme judge (see above). On the other hand, the Last Judgment is when God’s role as
supreme judge will become manifest, and furthermore in the Last Judgment ‘the sheep
will be separated from the goats’ just as the waters were divided or separated into the water above and the water below. Daniel is the prophet of the Last Judgment, and it was fitting therefore that he should have been been placed below the Separation of the Waters.
Daniel’s being young and barefaced is traditional.
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Ezekiel
The third Major Prophet on the ceiling is Ezekiel. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel was a
priest (‘Factum est verbum Domini ad Ezechielem, filium Buzi, sacerdotem’ (Eze 1:3)),
and he had a very long and detailed vision of a new and improved Temple (Chapters 4044). He bears the traditional traits of Peter, tight curls and a short curly beard. The beard
and curls are white, as is often the case with Peter. Now Peter was the archetypal priest
and the basis upon which the successor of the Temple, the Church, is founded. Ezekiel is
not usually associated with Peter, so it is possible that Ezekiel bears the traits of Peter here
in particular because right next door a new St. Peter’s Basilica, a new and improved successor to the Jewish Temple, was just then being built. Alternatively Ezekiel bears the
traits of Peter here in particular because the Sistine Chapel was apparently identified with
the Temple (the proportions of the chapel are those of the Temple and an inscription referring to the chapel in the fifth fresco on the right wall mentions the Temple—see below).
And the chapel of course is that of the successors of Peter.
Stepping forward, Ezekiel turns bitterly and indignantly to the angel behind him.
This illustrates Eze 3:14: ‘Abii amarus, in indignatione spiritus mei’. The angel points upward, inviting Ezekiel to look up to the heavens to see them opening, in accordance with
Eze 1:1: ‘Aperti sunt cæli et vidi visiones Dei’. The wind rushing through Ezekiel’s upper
garment is the whirlwind accompanying his visions: ‘Ecce ventus turbinis veniebat ab
aquilone’ (Eze 1:4).
Above Ezekiel is the Creation of Eve, and everyone agrees that this is not an accident. The usual theory is that Ezekiel was placed below the Creation of Eve because he
said, ‘Et dixit Dominus ad me: Porta haec clausit erit; non aperietur, et vir non transibit
per eam, quoniam Dominus Deus Israel ingressus est per eam; eritque clausam’ (Eze 44:1-
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2). That is, ‘And the Lord said to me, this door shall be closed; it shall not be opened, and a
man shall not pass through it, because the Lord God of Israel entered through it; it shall be
closed’. According to Christian exegesis the closed door refers to the virginity of Mary.
Mary is the second Eve, and this is why Ezekiel was placed below the Creation of Eve.
This explanation seems to me unlikely. According to it, Ezekiel was placed below
the Creation of Eve because he referred to Mary in one of his prophecies. But other prophets also referred to Mary in their prophecies, at least according to their Christian readings.
Isaiah for example famously said that ‘A virgin shall conceive,’ etc. This is the first prophecy that comes to mind when thinking of Mary, and if the prophet assigned to this spot was
selected for his connection with Mary, we would rather expect to see Isaiah here. Isaiah is
as much a Major Prophet as Ezekiel, so he would have fitted equally well the program’s
apparent requirement that the first four slots be assigned to the Major Prophets. The Mary
interpretation thus seems to me unconvincing.
An explanation for why Ezekiel was placed below the Creation of Eve more in keeping with the ecclesiological and papalist tenor of the ceiling is the following. Ezekiel has a
detailed vision of a new Temple in Chapters 40-44; and the Church saw itself as the New
Temple. Now the Church Fathers interpreted the water and blood which came out of the
wound in Christ’s side as symbolizing the two main sacraments of the Church, baptism
and the Eucharist, and hence as a reference to the Church. They said that just as Eve was
born out of a wound in Adam’s side, the Church was born of a wound in the side of Christ,
who is the New Adam. So Ezekiel, who was the prophet of the new Temple, was placed
below the scene depicting the birth of Eve from the side of Adam because this episode prefigured the birth of the Church from the side of Christ. Ezekiel is endowed with the features of Peter because in the papalist view a reference to the Church should always be
completed with a reminder that its head is Peter’s successor. An allusion to Peter in the
middle of a lateral side of the Chapel also fittingly balances Jonah’s alluding to Paul in the
middle of one of the narrow sides (see above).
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Isaiah
The book of Isaiah begins with the words ‘Visio Isaiæ, filii Amos’ (Isa 1:1). In conformity with this the prophet Isaiah on the ceiling is depicted as having a vision, which a
putto is pointing out. To see this vision Isaiah interrupts his reading and closes his book of
law, so the vision is presumably of the future coming of Christ, which will make the written law irrelevant. Isaiah is waking up because Isa 52:1 reads, ‘Consurge, consurge’.
The Genesis scene over Isaiah is the sacrifice of Noah after the Flood. On that occasion God promised not to repeat the Flood: ‘Non erunt ultra aquæ diluvii ad delendum
universam carnem’ (Gen 9:15). The only later Biblical reference to this promise is in Isaiah: ‘Sicut in diebus Noe istud mihi est, cui juravi ne inducerem aquas Noe ultra supra terram’ (Isa 54:9). Thus Isaiah was placed under the sacrifice of Noah because Isaiah is the
only prophet who has a relationship with the sacrifice of Noah.
Joel
After the other areas intended for the prophets were assigned to Jonah, Zechariah,
and the four Major Prophets, one slot was left unfilled. This spot was given to Joel. There
were several reasons for choosing Joel. First, Joel has a special connection with Peter because Peter’s first sermon begins with a long quotation from Joel, who is, somewhat unusually, explicitly named as its source (Acts 2:16-21). This quotation concerns the end of
time, and on the ceiling Joel is under the story of Noah, the most important episode of
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which is the Flood. Now according to Jesus the Flood prefigures the end of time.1
More specifically, Joel is under the ninth scene, where Noah plants a vine and gets
drunk. Now Joel is the prophet of vines, wine and drunkenness. He says, ‘Expergissimini,
ebrii, et flete et ululate, omnes qui bibitis vinum’ (Joel 1:5). That is, ‘Awake ye drunkards
and weep, and howl, all ye drinkers of wine’. Joel was chosen then for this spot because at
the same time he has a relationship with Peter and his prophecies harmonize with the
neighboring scenes.
The Sibyls2
The sibyls were mythical oracles of antiquity. They should not be confused with the
pythies, who were real. Their interest for Christianity was that there existed a pseudepigraphical Judeo-Christian text called the Oracula Sibylina that claimed to be by the sibyls
and was presented as proof that various events recorded or predicted in the Old and New
Testaments, and in particular the Virgin Birth and the Passion, were also revealed to the
sibyls. The editio princeps of the Oracula Sibyllina (in Greek with a Latin translation) was
published in Basle only in 1535, and all that was readily available when the ceiling was
painted were extracts reported by early Christian authors, principally Lactantius.
The sibyls were often represented in church decorations in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, both apart and together with prophets, for several reasons. Their visions
confirmed the Christian reading of the prophets as predicting the Incarnation, they
demonstrated that the Jews did not have a monopoly on divine revelation, and the sibyls
introduced a pleasing feminine variety into the monotonous, all male series of prophets.
1
See Matt 24:36-41.
See Emile Mâle, ‘L’Art religieux à la fin du moyen âge en France, Paris 1949, p. 253-65, and Esther Gordon Dotson, ‘An Augustinian Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling’, Part II, The Art Bulletin 61,
1979/2, p. 405ff. A detailed description of Italian sibyls can be found in X. Barbier de Montault, ‘Iconographie des Sibylles’, Revue de l’art chrétien 13, 1869, p. 224f., 321f., 465f., and 578f.
2
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Their presence was felt to be particularly appropriate in churches associated with the Virgin, since the sibyls were themselves virgins; the Sistine Chapel is such a church, since it is
dedicated to her Assumption. As the sibyls were heathens, in the Sistine Chapel they also
indicate that the jurisdiction of the Pope extends to the heathens, in the same way that the
demons and the Jews1 indicate that the jurisdiction of the Pope extends to the demons and
the Jews. And finally the sibyls’ alternating with the prophets continues the rigid malefemale pairing found everywhere on the ceiling to suggest the couple Pope-Church.
The number and names of the sibyls varied. This was possible because the visions
of the Oracula sibyllina were not divided between the individual sibyls but attributed to
them collectively. In consequence, in spite of repeated efforts by exegetes to discover or
invent differences, the sibyls did not possess clearly defined separate distinct identities,
with the exception of the Cumaean sibyl, who is discussed in Virgil’s fourth eclogue.
In medieval and Renaissance art the sibyls are practically always accompanied by
texts mostly taken from Lactantius, and in the case of the Cumæan sibyl from Virgil’s
fourth eclogue. Since the other sibyls were not individualized, texts were at first assigned
to them more or less at random. In the fifteenth century series of sibyls with fixed texts
begin to appear; these were recorded in a book by Filippo Barbieri entitled ‘Discordantiæ
nonnullæ inter sanctum Hieronymum et Augustinum’. The title refers to the first section
of the book, which is a scholastic, purely medieval theological discussion. The second section is consecrated to the sibyls and is made up of an introduction and of alternating
woodcuts of sibyls and prophets. The texts associated with the figures appear under them,
and the sibyls have in addition written-out descriptions of their appearances. These descriptions were used many times by artists in Rome and Florence.
Since on the ceiling too the sibyls and prophets alternate, successive authors have
naturally wondered if the ceiling followed the Discordantiæ in other respects. The general
1
See the section on the demons above and the section on the Jews in the triangles below.
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consensus has so far been that there is little or no relation between the appearances of the
sibyls on the ceiling and the descriptions in the Discordantiæ. But in fact the ceiling follows these descriptions closely; only it sometimes follows descriptions that in the book are
associated with other sibyls. Here we will try to reconstruct how the names and descriptions of the sibyls were chosen and why they were mismatched.
The first edition of the Discordantiæ came out in 1481, and many others followed,
often with modifications. In particular there is an undated edition printed sometime between 1500 and 1510 by Koebel at Oppenheim, where three of the texts accompanying the
sibyls are augmented by the phrases appearing next to them on the pavement of the Cathedral of Siena.
In all editions the names of the sibyls appear twice, first in the introduction to the
section of the book concerned with the sibyls, and then in the body of this section, which
contains the illustrations and the descriptions. However the names listed in the introduction are not identical with the names that appear in the body of the section. There is for
example a Sibylla Cumæa in the introduction but not among the illustrations.
The list in the introduction repeats the list in Lactantius.1 Now both in Lactantius
and in the introduction the first five names are the Sibylla Persica, the Sibylla Libyca, the
Sibylla Delphica, the Sibylla Cumæa, and the Sibylla Erythræa. These are precisely the
sibyls on the Sistine ceiling.1 The order on the ceiling though is: Libica, Persica, Cumæa,
Erythræa, Delphica.
According to us the original plan was to present the sibyls in the order found in the
introduction and follow the written-out descriptions of the body of the section when painting their appearances. But for various reasons the names of the Libyan and Persian sibyls
were switched, the Delphic Sibyl placed at the end, and the description of Hellespontic
Sibyl used for the Cumæan Sibyl.
1
‘Divinæ institutiones’, Book 1, Chap. 6.
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First we note that the names of the Libyan and the Persian sibyls were interchanged. To see this, we notice that the appearance of the Sibylla Libica on the ceiling corresponds to the description of the Sibylla Persica in the Koebel edition of the Discordantiæ, and reciprocally the appearance of the Persicha on the ceiling corresponds to the
description of the Libyca.
The Persian Sibyl is described as ‘vestita veste aurea cum velo albo in capite’. She is
saying: ‘Ecce bestia conculcaberis et gignetur Dominus in orbe terrarum, et gremium virginis erit salus gentium et pedes ejus erunt in valetudine (sic) hominum’. To this the
Koebel edition adds: ‘Panibus solum quinque et piscibus duobus hominum millia in foeno
quinque saliebit relinquias tollens XII cophinos implebit in spem multorum.’
On the ceiling the Libyan Sibyl is wearing a gold-colored cloth (‘vestita vesta aurea’) and has a white scarf on her head (‘cum velo albo in capite’). She is crushing something with her left foot (‘ecce bestia conculcaberis’—the beast itself is missing), and the
helper angels in the background are holding a bundle. Though in Latin ‘cophinus’ properly
means basket, the bundle, which may be of hay, seems to be the ‘cophinus’ of the text. So
the appearance of the Libyan Sibyl on the ceiling corresponds to the description of the
Persian Sibyl in the Koebel edition. The Koebel text explains not only the appearance but
also the attitude and posture of this sibyl, which Wölfflin dismissed in ‘Die Klassische
Kunst’ as ‘viel Lärm um nichts’ (5th edition, Munich 1912, p. 62).
On the other hand, the Libyan Sibyl is described in the Discordantiæ as ‘ornata serto viridi et florido in capite, vestita pallio honesto et non multum juvenis’. Her text is:
‘Colaphos accipiens tacebit. Dabit in verbera innocens dorsum. In manus iniquas veniet.
Dabunt deo alapas manibus incestis.’ To which the Koebel edition adds: ‘Miserabilis et
ignominiosus, miserabilibus spem præbabit.’
The Persian Sibyl on the ceiling corresponds to the description of the Libyan Sibyl
1
That the five sibyls on the ceiling coincide with the first five sibyls in Lactantius was first noticed by K.
Borinsky in ‘Die Rätsel Michelangelos’, Munich 1908, p. 187.
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in the book and to the text added by Koebel. She is wearing a cloak (‘vestita pallio honesto’), her tight head covering is green (‘ornata serto viridi et florido in capite’), she is not
young (‘non multum juvenis’), and the persons in the background are nothing if not miserable (‘miserabilis et ignominiosus, miserabilibus spem præbabit’).
So clearly Michelangelo followed the Discordantiæ’s description of the Persian Sibyl when painting the sibyl labeled ‘Libica’ on the ceiling, and its description of the Libyan
Sibyl when painting the sibyl labeled ‘Persicha’. In other words, the sibyl labeled ‘Libica’
was originally meant to represent the Persian Sibyl, and the sibyl labeled ‘Persicha’ the
Libyan, and the names were interchanged after the sibyls were painted.
The names were interchanged so that the sibyls might better harmonize with the
neighboring Genesis scenes. The text associated with the Libyan Sibyl contains the phrase:
‘Ecce veniet dies et illuminabit condempsa (sic) tenebrarum’. This phrase brings to mind
the separation of light from darkness, and so having the Libyan Sibyl next to the scene
illustrating that event seemed apposite. Unfortunately, when the thought occurred to the
artist (or to his theologian mentor), it was too late: the Persian Sibyl had already been
painted next to the Separation of Light from Darkness. There was however a solution. One
could still have a Libyan Sibyl next to the first scene by the simple expedient of changing
the name of the first sibyl from Persicha to Libica. After all, Barbieri’s book was not Scripture and there was nothing sacred about his descriptions. In exchange, the name ‘Persicha’
was attached to the ex-Libyan Sibyl.
If we restore to the sibyls their original names, their order on the ceiling becomes
Persian – Libyan – Cumæan - Erythræan – Delphic. This is close to the order of the sibyls
in the introduction, which is Persian – Libyan – Delphic – Cumæan – Erythræan. The
only difference is that on the ceiling the Delphic Sibyl is placed at the end. This shift appears to derive from the sibyls’ alternating with prophets on the ceiling as in the illustrations. In the Koebel edition the prophets were omitted, but normally the images of the
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sibyls with the accompanying texts had opposite them illustrations of prophets over texts
taken from their books. The successive pages are inscribed, in order, Sibylla Persica, Oseus
propheta, Sibylla Libyca, Jeremias propheta, Sibilla Delphica, Jeremias propheta, Sibylla
Cimmeria, Joel propheta, Sibylla Erythræa, Ezechiel propheta, Sibylla Samia, David
propheta, Sibylla Cumana, Daniel propheta, Sibylla Hellespontica, Jone [sic], Sibylla
Phrygia, Malachia propheta, Sibylla Europa, Zacharias, Sibylla Tiburtina, Micheus
propheta, Sibylla Agrippa.
Once it was decided that the first five sibyls of the introduction and the five prophets Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Joel were to be represented over the lateral
walls, an effort was made to have the sibyls appear next to the prophets that were next to
them in the illustrations. The original Sibylla Libyca (today’s Persicha) was already by Jeremiah’s side on the ceiling as she is in the book. The Sibylla Erythræa was placed between
Joel and Ezekiel, as in the Discordantiae, and the Sibylla Cumæa near Daniel (since there
is no Sibylla Cumæa in the illustrations, the Sibylla Cumæa was identified with the Sibylla
Cumana for this purpose)1. In the book the Sibylla Delphica is next to Jeremiah. She could
could not be next to Jeremiah on the ceiling because Jeremiah was the first prophet over
the left wall (he had to be over the Pope’s throne for papalist reasons—see above) and so
he had, and could have, only one neighboring sibyl; and that neighboring sibyl already was
the (original) Sibylla Libyca (the present Persicha). The only unfilled slot left at this point
was the last, and so the Delphic Sibyl was moved to the end of the series. As for the Persian
Sibyl, she could not be near Hosea, as she is in the Discordantiæ, because Hosea does not
appear on the ceiling. So having three sibyls, the Libyan, the Erythræan, and the Cumæan,
near the prophets that were next to them in the book was the best that could be done under the circumstances.
We have seen that the appearances of the Libyan and Persian sibyls actually follow
1
Emile Mâle already noted (p. 262) that both on the ceiling and in the book the Sibylla Erythrea was next to
Ezekiel and a Sibylla Cumana or Cumaea next to Daniel.
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Barbieri’s characterizations closely. This is also the case of the Cumæan Sibyl. To illustrate
the Cumæan Sibyl on the ceiling posed a problem, because there is no Sibylla Cumæa in
the body of the section dealing with the sibyls (illustrations, descriptions, and texts). There
is however a Sibylla Cumana, which is almost the same, and who, as we saw, was identified
with the Cumæan Sibyl when deciding where the Cumæan Sibyl should be placed. Unfortunately Michelangelo could not follow the description of the Sibylla Cumana either, because that sibyl, though present in the body of the work, exceptionally had no accompanying written description. What to do? What Michelangelo did was borrow, presumably with
some impatience, the characterization of the next sibyl in the body of the treatise, the Hellespontic.
The description of the Hellespontic Sibyl states that she is ‘in agro Trojana nata,
vetusta at antiqua, veste rurali induta, ligato velo antiquo [capite] sub gula circumvoluta
usque ad scapulas quasi despectu’. The sibyl entitled ‘Cumaea’ on the ceiling follows this
description point by point. She has an agricultural air, she is old and ancient, she is wearing country clothes, she has an old-fashioned cloth tied around her head, and below her
neck she is wrapped in drapery up to her shoulders. In addition, with her bare chest and
almost-bare breasts she is not quite respectable.1 So for the third time a sibyl on the ceiling
follows a description of a sibyl in the book, only not the one one expected.
The next sibyl on the ceiling is the Erythræan. In the Discordantiæ the Erythræan
Sibyl is laconically described as ‘nobilissima’ with no further qualifications, and the Erythrean Sibyl on the ceiling does look noble: she is wearing a helmet and is very well
dressed, with three layers of clothing. A putto is lighting a lamp for her to read by, a service rendered to no other sibyl.
1
It follows from this explanation that the appearance of the Cumæan Sibyl on the ceiling has nothing to do
with Virgil’s fourth eclogue, contrary to what is often affirmed.
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Finally, the Delphic Sibyl is described in the Discordantiæ as ‘vestita veste nigra et
capillis circumligatis capiti, in manu cornu tenens et juvenis’. The Delphic Sibyl on the
ceiling follows this description closely. She is young, she has on a black head covering and
a black cloak, and she has a hair-band tied around her head. She is holding a small object
resembling a seashell in her right hand, perhaps because seashells are a type of horn, and
‘cornu’ looks very much like ‘conca’ in some versions of Gothic lettering.
Since, except for the placing of the name of the Libyan Sibyl, there is, so far as one
can tell, no theological significance to the names, appearances and placings of the sibyls, it
seems likely that Michelangelo was given a free hand in this matter. We have seen that for
the compositions on the medallions Michelangelo turned to a book, the Malermi Bible, for
inspiration. Now we see that for the appearances of the sibyls he did the exact same thing:
far from letting his imagination roam, he consulted a book. That Michelangelo needed
help in imagining the appearances of the sibyls is even more curious than that he should
have needed help for the scenes on the medallions. The readiness and nonchalance with
which he transferred the Discordantiæ’s descriptions from one sibyl to another is on the
other hand rather amusing.
The Ancestors and the Corner Scenes on the Sistine Ceiling
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
In this chapter we discuss the outermost zone of the Sistine ceiling, which consists
of the areas inside the penetrations cutting into the vault: the lunettes, the curved triangles
above them, and the corner scenes. All the triangles and nearly all the lunettes contain
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family groups consisting of a man, a woman, and one or more children.
Like the ignudi and the prophets and sibyls, the adults in the lunettes are seated.
They are seated for the same reason the ignudi are seated: because the Sistine Chapel is
the chapel of the Pope, and in Latin the Holy See is the Sancta Sedes or Holy Seat. Why the
figures in the triangles sit directly on the ground is discussed below.
Tablets in the lunettes contain the names of the ancestors of Christ. The New Testament lists the ancestors of Christ twice, in the first chapter of Matthew and in the third
chapter of Luke, and the names in the two lists are not the same. The names on the ceiling
are the ones in Matthew. The first seven names are missing on the ceiling because Michelangelo later destroyed the first two lunettes when he painted the Last Judgment on the
altar wall, but what these lunettes looked like is known through copies.
The number of names on the tablets is variable, ranging from one (in the
Aminadab and Naason lunettes) to four (in one of the destroyed lunettes). The names proceed chronologically in zigzag fashion from the altar to the entrance, hopping from one
side of the chapel to the other, with one exception: the three names after Amon are in the
next lunette on the same side of the chapel. After this hiccup the names resume crossing
regularly back and forth. But now the names on the right-hand wall precede those on the
left.
Church decorations with the ancestors of Christ are rare in Italy, but not inexistent.
There is an abbreviated tree of ancestors going back to Adam on the façade of the Cathedral at Orvieto and a complete series of ancestors beginning with Abraham in the Basilica
of St. Anthony in Padua. On the Sistine ceiling the series of ancestors is present for two
reasons, the first general and the second papalist.
In the Middle Ages trees of Jesse with ancestors of Jesus (really of Joseph) appear
in churches dedicated to the Virgin, since down to Mathan the ancestors of Joseph are also
those of the Virgin, and in fact the Cathedral of Orvieto is dedicated to the Virgin. Since
the Sistine Chapel is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, we may assume that the
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ancestors on the Sistine ceiling are there in her honor.
This seems the more probable since there is a formal similarity between the decoration on the Sistine ceiling and the sculpted portals of medieval French cathedrals dedicated to the Virgin. Both on the ceiling and in the voussoirs of the portals there are three
concentric series of figures. In the portals the series are of angels, prophets and the ancestors of Christ, and on the ceiling the series are of the ignudi, the prophets and the sibyls,
and the ancestors of Christ. Since the ignudi are angels, the series in the medieval cathedrals and on the Sistine ceiling are the same. The three series appear in the same order on
the ceiling and in the portals of the cathedrals. It seems probable therefore that the series
of ancestors in the triangles and the lunettes are, at least partly, in honor of the Virgin.
Still, in Italy the decoration of churches and cathedrals dedicated to the Virgin does
not normally include series of ancestors of Christ, and there is an additional, indirectly
papalist reason for their presence here. The ceiling follows the text of Innocent IV listing
the precursors of the Popes, and this text, after mentioning the ‘others who were in governance over the Jewish People for a time’, says: ‘et sic duravit usque ad Christum, qui fuit
naturalis Dominus et Rex noster’ (‘and so it lasted until Christ, who was by birth our Lord
and King’). In the medallions the ‘others who were in governance over the Jewish People
for a time’ are illustrated in part with episodes from the Books of Maccabees, and the next
phrase in Innocent IV’s text characerizes the succeeding period as leading up to the birth
of Christ. In the Vulgate Matthew’s list of ancestors leading up to the birth of Christ immediately follows the Books of Maccabees, because in the Vulgate the Books of Maccabees
appear not among the historical books but after the prophets and just before the Gospel of
Matthew. So after having illustrated episodes in the Books of Maccabees to continue by
illustrating Matthew’s list of ancestors is in keeping with Innocent IV’s papalist text.
The questions before us are: 1. Why are the figures in the lunettes and triangles almost always nuclear families? 2. Why are they not nuclear families in two cases? 3. Why
does the number of names in the tablets vary from one to four? 4. Why do the names zig
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instead of zag after Amon? 5. Why do some lunettes contain two families and others only
one? 6. What exactly are the people in the lunettes doing? 7. Why are the families in the
triangles in darkness? Why are they sitting directly on the ground? Why are they so sad?
The outermost zone as it was first conceived
Apparently the contents of the outermost zone of the ceiling (i.e., the curved triangles, the lunettes, and the corner scenes) were determined in three successive stages, with
each stage modifying the preceding one. All three stages left a mark on the result. We can
reconstruct what happened as follows.
With the two series of the ignudi and the prophets and sibyls in place, the ancestors
of Christ were assigned to the curved triangles, which were the only unfilled spaces left on
the ceiling proper. Originally there were sixteen such triangles. This was deemed insufficient to accommodate comfortably the forty ancestors of Christ listed in Matthew, and to
give the ancestors more room areas on the lateral walls over the windows were annexed to
the ceiling decoration.
These fan-shaped areas are the so-called lunettes. Originally there were sixteen lunettes, which together with the sixteen triangles made thirty-two spaces for the forty ancestors. This was still not enough, and the lunettes were divided in two by tablets. The
number of spaces in the lunettes was thus doubled, and there were now forty-eight spaces
for the forty ancestors—eight too many. To cut the number of spaces down to forty, the
eight triangles in the corners were removed from the series and transformed into the four
corner spaces. This is essentially why there are four scenes in the corner spaces: so that the
number of spaces assigned to the ancestors should be precisely forty.
With this system there should be three names in the lunettes that have triangles
over them, but only two names in the lunettes in the corners. For the tablets in the lu-
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nettes that have triangles over them have three spaces around them—the space in the triangle and two spaces in the lunette—and the tablets in the lunettes in the corners have
only the lunette spaces to account for.
And indeed this is the way the names are distributed on the back and lateral walls.
There are two names in each of the corner lunettes in the back and three in the lunettes
under the triangles. Only in the lunettes in the bay nearest the altar wall is the system different. Since the order in which the ceiling was painted was back to front, it is clear that
originally the system adopted was the ‘forty spaces for the forty ancestors’ scheme, and
that the system was modified later.
That the original system was modified en route is clear also by another consideration. The original intention was clearly to represent individually the forty male ancestors
in the forty spaces, for there is no point in preparing forty spaces for the forty male ancestors unless one intends to place one male ancestor in each space. But instead of forty individual male ancestors what we have on the ceiling are family groups. The number of families is not forty (some lunettes contain one family and others two), nor is the total number
of male adults plus male children forty (some lunettes and triangles have more than one
male infant). Nor is the number of generations forty. The lunettes and triangles contain
twenty-four complete nuclear families (a father, a mother, and at least one child). Four
lunettes are irregular: in one lunette the woman is missing, in another the children, and in
two lunettes both the adult male and the children have disappeared and we have a male
adolescent instead. The irregularities occur near the altar wall, in very last lunettes to be
painted. What very likely happened will be discussed below.
For the moment we note that the original plan of representing separately the forty
ancestors was dropped. There must have been a strong reason for modifying so radically a
system someone had taken such pains to set up, and in the Sistine Chapel this reason
could not be other than papalist.
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A papalist argument in the triangles and the lunettes
A well-known papalist argument in favor of papal primacy was that the obligation
to obey the Pope follows from the obligation to obey one’s parents. Indeed, the Pope is the
Holy Father, and all, kings included, address him as Father; he in turn addresses them as
‘sons’. This argument is stated explicitly by Augustinus Triumphus, who was, of the extreme papalist theoreticians, the best known, if not quite the most extreme: ‘Planum est
autem quod omnes qui sunt in corpore mystico Ecclesiae comparantur ad papam sicut filii
ad patrem … Nam filii tenentur obedire parentibus.’1 That is, ‘It is clear that all who are in
the mystical body of the Church [i.e., all Christians] are to the Pope as sons to their father
… and sons are held to obey their parents.’
Augustinus Triumphus’ reasoning then is that one should obey the Pope because
the Pope is the father of all Christians and one should obey one’s father. One should obey
one’s father because the Fifth Commandment says that one should honor one’s parents.
The duty of Christians to obey the Pope thus follows from the commandment’s injunction
to honor one’s father and one’s mother. Now the mother of all Christians is the Church,
who is, fortunately, the Spouse of the Pope. ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’ thus implies
‘Honor the Pope and the Church’.
The original intention was to represent the ancestors of Christ as a series of fathers.
Each name in the Matthew’s list is followed by the word ‘genuit’ (engendered), and in the
other representations of the ancestors, the ancestors are in fact all adult males, that is to
say, fathers. All these fathers apparently suggested to someone that one could slip in here
an allusion to the Christian’s duty to obey his father, and hence the Pope. That one should
obey one’s father is in the Fifth Commandment, which says that one should obey one’s
1
See Augustinus Triumphus, ‘Summa de potestate ecclesiastica’, ci 8.
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father and mother; the ancestor series on the ceiling was therefore modified so as to recall
the Fifth Commandment. To recall the Fifth Commandment the presence of a father, a
mother and at least one child is indispensable. The exclusively male ancestors were consequently replaced by nuclear families, with a father, a mother, and an obedient child or
children. The nuclear families are complete with monotonous regularity in the triangles
and the lunettes—the only exceptions are the lunettes in the first bay, which were painted
last, and where the system was again modified (see below).
This is why women and children replaced so many male ancestors in the triangles
and the lunettes. There are no grandparents, in spite of the fact that it would have been
natural for some families to contain three generations, since some of the tablets contain
three names and therefore refer to three generations. The reason that nevertheless there
are no grandparents in the triangles and the lunettes is that the Fifth Commandment says
nothing about grandparents.
The number of children the families have is realistically irregular, reflecting the
fact that some families have more children than others. That several lunettes and triangles
include more than one child confirms that the aim is no longer to represent exclusively the
ancestors of Christ, since the extra children are necessarily non-ancestors. In agreement
with the fact that the aim now is to illustrate the Fifth Commandment, some scenes show
the parents educating their children.
The Fifth Commandment also explains two other characteristics of the triangles
and the lunettes: in the lunettes the men and women grow old, and in the triangles they sit
and lie directly on the ground. The full text of the Commandment reads: ‘Honora patrem
tuum et matrem tuam, ut sis longævus super terram quam Dominus Deus tuus dabit tibi’
(Ex 20:12). Literally this says, ‘Honor your father and your mother so that you may [live
to] be of a great age upon the earth which your Lord God gave you’.
To illustrate ‘to [live to] be of a great age’, the men grow old systematically, and all
ages are represented in the lunettes. There is an unborn baby in the Roboam lunette, a
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newly born baby in swaddling clothes in the Salmon lunette, and a child suckling his
mother in the Asa lunette. There are many children of indeterminate age, two adolescents
in the Aminadab and Naason lunettes, a young man in the Eleazar lunette, middle-aged
men in the Azor and Ozias lunettes, and old men in the Jacob and Achim lunettes.
That aging is the main point of the iconography is confirmed by the two figures in
the central and most conspicuous positions on the back wall directly over the entrance.
These figures are a youth (in the right half of the Eleazar lunette) and an old man (in the
left half of the Jacob lunette), and they express the theme of aging in concentrated form.
The women in the lunettes too grow old, and in the lunettes on the back wall the
women as well as the men illustrate the theme of youth versus age. Thus the woman in the
left half of the Eleazar lunette is old and the symmetrically corresponding woman in the
right half of the Jacob lunette is young.
Youth and age are also contrasted between the male and female figures in the
same lunette. While the man in the right half of the Eleazar lunette is young and handsome, the woman in the left half of the lunette is old and ugly. And while the man in the
left half of the Jacob lunette is old, and woman in the right half of the lunette is young and
pretty. Indeed, youth and age are contrasted even within the same half-lunette. Thus the
woman behind the handsome young man in the Eleazar lunette is old and the woman behind the old man in the Jacob lunette is young.
The text of the Fifth Commandment ends with: ‘upon the earth that the Lord God
gave you’. To illustrate this, the families in the triangles sit and lie directly upon the earth.
The Law of Woman in the lunettes
Besides referring the Fifth Commandment, which is of course a law, the lunettes
also illustrate the theme of law in another way. In the Middle Ages the word ‘law’ also
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meant ‘innate predisposition’. Thus a sheep obeys the ‘law of sheep’ by being meek and a
dog ‘the law of the dog’ by being fierce.1 For Aquinas this law is not law in the full sense of
the term because it has nothing to do with reason, but it resembles law because it determines one’s actions.
The women in the lunettes illustrate the ‘law of woman’. This they do by doing
womanly things. The woman in the Aminadab lunette combs her hair. The woman in the
Naason lunette gazes at a mirror. The woman in the Jesse lunette spins. The woman in the
Achim lunette prepares food. The woman in the triangle over the Jesse lunette makes
clothes. The woman in the left half of the Eleazar lunette takes care of the household (the
keys and moneybag she carries signify housekeeping). The woman in the Roboam lunette
bears a child, and the woman in the Asa lunette suckles hers. Several other women bring
up theirs. Thus the theme of law, already treated on the walls of the chapel, in the central
scenes of the ceiling and otherwise in the lunettes, is also present here. Women rather
than men illustrate the term ‘law’ in the sense it has for irrational creatures because women are considered (by men) as more irrational than men.
The number of family groups
We turn now to the question of why some lunettes contain two families while others only have one. There were forty generations between Abraham and Jesus. If there were
forty families in the lunettes and triangles, they could represent the forty generations if
each ancestor appeared twice, once as a child and once as an adult. But this is not the system adopted on the ceiling, because some lunettes have only one family spread out over
1
‘Sic igitur sub Deo legislatore diversae creaturae diversas habent naturales inclinationes … ut si dicam quod
furibundum esse est quodammodo lex canis, est autem contra legem ovis vel alterius mansueti animalis’ ST
1-2 xci 6 resp.
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the two lunette spaces, which means that there are fewer than forty families. We could on
the other hand consider the families as disjoint, and then, since each family contains two
generations, we would have forty generations in the lunettes taken alone if twelve lunettes
had one family and four lunettes two. In particular, if each of the four lunettes on the entrance and altar walls had two families and the twelve other lunettes only one, we would
end up with exactly twenty families and hence forty generations in the lunettes.
This distribution was indeed attempted. There are two families in each of the two
lunettes on the entrance wall and there were two families in each of the two destroyed lunettes on the altar wall, while there is only one family in each of the other lunettes. The
total number of families in the lunettes is thus twenty, which is the required number. This
is why some lunettes have two families and others only one: so that the number of families
in the lunettes should be precisely twenty. (This explanation implies that the two lunettes
nearest the altar wall were to have, like the others, a grown man and a child, and that replacing the grown man and child by an adolescent was a last minute modification. That
the system was indeed modified again is also shown by other indices.)
There remained to denote visibly that the eight triangles should not be counted for
this purpose. To distinguish and separate visually the triangles from the lunettes, they
were provided with dark backgrounds and accorded frames containing shells and acorns.
The triangles were thus annexed to the corner scenes, which also have dark backgrounds
and also have frames containing shells and acorns.
The Jews in the triangles and the lunettes
The figures in the triangles were thus related to the figures in the corner scenes.
The corner scenes contain episodes where the Jewish people were saved from annihilation
(the corner scenes at the altar end of the ceiling) and foreign conquest (the corner scenes
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at the entrance end). So the corner scenes concern specifically the Jews. It follows that the
families in the triangles also concern the Jews. Indeed the names of the ancestors of Jesus
on the tablets are the ones given by Matthew, and in contrast to the list of ancestors in
Luke 3:23-37, which goes back to Adam, the list in Matthew underlines the Jewishness of
the ancestors by starting with Abraham. To make sure this point is not missed, Matthew
presents Jesus as ‘Son of Abraham’ (Matt 1:1). For the ancestors of Jesus to be identified
with the Jews in general was not unusual. The ancestors of the Virgin were all Jews, and
the Virgin often stands for the Jews before Christ in medieval decorative schemes.
The Jews are characterized in Heb 11:38 as ‘in solitudinibus errant’ and the figures
in the triangles are in fact wandering in desolation, both in the meaning of sorrowfulness
and of wasteland. The same chapter says that the Jews are pilgrims on earth: ‘quia peregrini et hospites sunt super terram’ (Heb 11:13), which also fits the appearance of the families in the triangles, who sit and lie on the earth.
The Jews are pensive as well as sad, both in the triangles and in the lunettes, because pilgrims are traditionally supposed to be pensive. They are so described by Dante in
his famous sonnet, ‘Deh peregrini chi pensosi andate’.1 Dante discusses this sonnet in
Chapter 40 of the Vita Nova, where he relates pilgrims in the wider sense, who are simply
people away from their homeland, to pilgrims in the narrow sense, who are going to or
coming back from Santiago de Compostela. He says :
E dissi ‘peregrini’ secondo la larga significazione del vocabulo, ché peregrini
si possono intendere in due modi, in uno largo e in uno stretto: in largo, in quanto
è peregrino chiunque è fuori de la sua patria, in modo stretto non s’intende peregrino se non chi va verso la casa di sa’ Iacopo o riede.
1
The sonnet runs: ‘Deh peregrini chi pensosi andate, / forse de cosa che non v’è presente, / venite voi da si
lontana gente, / com’a la vista voi ne dimostrate, / che non piangete quando voi passate, / per lo suo mezzo la
città dolente, / come quelle persone che neente / par che ‘ntentendesser la sua gravitate? / Se voi restaste per
volerlo audire, / certo lo cor de’ sospiri mi dice / che lagrimando n’uscireste pui. / Ell’ha perduta la sua beatrice; / e le parole ch’om di lei pò dire / hanno vertù di far piangere altrui.’
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So just by the fact of being away from their homeland, the Jews are pilgrims.
To indicate that the figures inside the triangles and the lunettes are pilgrims, the
frames of the triangles, the curved lower edges of which also surround the lunettes, contain scallop shells. As Dante’s text shows, the word ‘pilgrim’ immediately brought to mind
pilgrims going to Santiago de Campostella. Scallop shells were the traditional symbol of
pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela in the Middle Ages, and later of pilgrims in general. The scallop shells in the frames of the triangles and the corner scenes thus indicate
that the Jews in them are pilgrims.
The shells in the frames of the triangles and the corner scenes alternate with oak
acorns. As is well known, the oak acorns in the Sistine Chapel refer to the family name of
Julius II, della Rovere, since in Italian ‘rovere’ means oak. The oak acorns around the Jews
seem to imply that the Pope has jurisdiction over the Jews. As we saw above, that the Pope
has jurisdiction over the heathens is a major claim of the program, and is the reason why
Jonah is so prominent. Papalist literature routinely couples assertions of papal jurisdiction
over the heathens with claims to papal jurisdiction over the Jews. Thus Innocent IV says:
‘Omnes autem fedeles quam infideles oves sunt Christi. Item Judeos potest judicare Papa.’
That is, ‘All are sheep of Christ, the faithful as well as the unbelievers. The Pope has the
power of jurisdiction over the Jews as well.’ By alluding to the Pope’s jurisdiction over the
Jews the acorns in the frames complete the list of papal claims to sovereignty: over the
Christians, over the heathens, and over the Jews.
Half of the outermost zone on the ceiling is in darkness (the curved triangles and
the corner scenes) and half in light (the lunettes). The Jews are thus half in light and half
in darkness. This corresponds to the Jews’ having but a partial revelation. In the lunettes
the Jews are seated as if on thrones while those in the triangles are sitting and lying on the
ground. This too illustrates their duple destiny. On the one hand they are God’s Chosen
People, and on the other they are dispersed and humiliated. Their condition corresponds
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to and announces the two states assumed by Christ: his humiliation and his glorification.
The two destroyed lunettes on the altar wall
The best copies of the two destroyed lunettes are too faded to be legible, but (hopefully accurate) engravings of them exist. In the left half of the first destroyed lunette a man
is reading something on a large book held open by a putto. Matthew calls his list of ancestors a book, ‘liber generationis Jesu Christi’, and the book may thus be the list of ancestors
of Jesus.1 The book would then be so large, not because Christ had so many ancestors, but
because the book is important. Another possibility is that the book contains the names of
all the descendants of Abraham, and the book is big because Abraham was promised that
his progeny would be as the stars in heaven and the sand that is on the seashore (Gen
22:17). The putto would then be the angel who transmitted God’s promise (Gen 22:16).
Both interpretations are possible, because on the one hand the tablets in the lunettes list
the ancestors, and on the other the figures in the lunettes represent the Jews in general.
The themes of the lunettes and triangles are the ancestors of Christ, the Jews in
general, and the Fifth Commandment. The destroyed lunettes announced these themes.
The tablets in the lunettes listed the first seven ancestors of Christ, and having the list
begin with Abraham announced the theme of the Jews. The second lunette developed the
Jewish theme by illustrating the supposed characteristics of the Jews, wandering and
blindness: the wandering man in the right half of the lunette illustrated their wandering,
and the man fast asleep in the left half their blindness. The wandering and blindness of the
Jews are depicted in all the triangles, where the Jews are camping in the dark, and in some
lunettes (Phares, Salmon, Roboam, and Ezechias), where they are either wandering or
1
Justi was the first to suggest this interpretation of the book.
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asleep.
The left half of the first lunette announced the commandment to honor one’s parents by containing for the first time a complete family—man, woman and child. The papalist moral of the lunettes is (or rather was) expressed explicitly in the right half of the first
lunette, which depicts Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordering Isaac to carry a bundle of
wood, and Isaac obeys. The subject is not the sacrifice of Isaac (the child is not bound and
Abraham is not wielding a knife), but rather the obedience of Isaac, who is carrying the
wood for his own sacrifice, prefiguring Christ carrying his own cross. This supreme example of filial obedience is the one Biblical episode that is clearly identifiable in the lunettes.
It is also unique in that there is no woman present. The story appears in the middle of the
altar wall. All this indicates or rather confirms that while the general moral of the lunettes
is to honor one’s parents, the specific point is the papalist one of obedience to one’s father.
The right half of second lunette too seems to illustrate an historical episode. A man
holding a walking stick steps upwards and looks out watchfully. He is setting out on a trip.
A woman behind him glances back and urges him on with an open palm. All this fits the
story of Jacob leaving Laban to go up to the Promised Land together with Rachel. Jacob
had neglected to inform Laban of his departure, and Rachel, who had stolen Laban’s
household gods, looks back anxiously and encourages Jacob to hurry up. Rachel did not
honor her father, which may be why the usual child illustrating filial piety seems to be
missing in this half-lunette. The exemplary filial obedience of a male in the right half of the
first lunette is thus contrasted with the filial disobedience of a female in the right half of
the second lunette (always assuming that the copies are accurate).
Aaron and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Sistine Chapel
In the first bay, the one nearest the altar wall, the system of distribution of names
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of the other lunettes was modified, as was the make-up of the nuclear families, naturally in
order to introduce more papalist allusions. In the first bay the distribution of the names is:
four names in the first (destroyed) lunette on the altar wall, three names in the second
(destroyed) lunette on the altar wall, but only one name in the Aminadab and Naason lunettes on the lateral walls. The first purpose of this modification of the original system was
to honor Aaron and hence the Popes.
As the original High Priest, Aaron was considered to be the prototype of the Popes,
as can be seen by the fact that in the Punishment of Korah fresco on the left wall of the
Chapel Aaron is wearing a papal tiara. Now among the ancestors of Christ the two closest
to Aaron were Aminadab and his son Naason, because Aminadab’s daughter and Naason’s
sister Elisheva (Elizabeth) married Aaron. Thus Aminadab and Naason were, respectively,
Aaron’s father- and brother-in-law. In order to honor Aaron (and by implication, the
Pope), the names Aminadab and Naason were, uniquely among the ancestors of Christ,
isolated and awarded an entire lunette each. Aaron was the first chief sacrificer, and the
lunettes are over the altar area. Aaron was the first High Priest, and the altar area contained the papal throne. Only here are Aminadab and Naason distinguished in this manner because only here are the ancestors of Christ a constituent part of a decoration scheme
whose theme is the glorification of the papacy.
Aaron was the progenitor of the priesthood, and the Aminadab and Naason lunettes in the first bay refer both to Aaron and to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. To see how
this is the case, we begin by noting that the first two lunettes are unique not only in that
their tablets contain but a single name each, but also in that the usual adult male and one
or more children present in all the other lunettes are here replaced by adolescents.
The wall frescoes under the first two lunettes are similarly exceptional. While all
the other titles over the wall frescoes mention the law, the two titles in the first bay speak
of regeneration. The titles read: OBSERVATIO ANTIQVE REGENERATIONIS A MOISE
PER CIRCONCISIONEM, and INSTITVTIO NOVAE REGENERATIONIS A CHRISTO IN
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BAPTISMO.
The first bay coincides with the altar area, and the titles in it deviate from the others because the lateral frescoes in the altar area illustrate baptism and its precursor, circumcision, since together with the Eucharist baptism is one of the two most important
sacraments. To illustrate baptism and circumcision in the altar area was evidently important, because so as to have an illustration of circumcision opposite the illustration of
baptism the circumcision of the son of Moses, an obscure and rarely represented episode,
was painted on the left wall out of chronological order, before the scene of Moses and the
daughters of Jethro rather than after.
Now the third most important sacrament after baptism and the Eucharist, according to the pseudo-Dionysius in his ‘Ecclesiastical Hierarchy’, is confirmation. The
Aminadab and Naason lunettes continue the first bay’s references to the most important
sacraments by alluding to confirmation. The adolescents in the lunettes accord with confirmation because confirmation is given to adolescents and because the boy in the
Aminadab lunette’s headband has been knocked aside. A band around the forehead is associated with confirmation because during the confirmation ceremony the officiating
bishop, after marking the candidate’s brow with holy oil, ties a headband around the forehead so that the oil may perdure as long as possible. A ligature tied around the brow of the
candidate seems to have typified the sacrament of confirmation, since in the reliefs illustrating the sacraments on the campanile of the Duomo in Florence, the boy being confirmed in the confirmation relief has a band tied around his forehead. During the confirmation ceremony the ministering bishop strikes the candidate on the cheek to remind him
that Christian life is a struggle. This rather strange custom is willfully exaggerated in the
lunette: the strike is turned into a blow, the boy’s left cheek is red (the bishop is assumed
to be right-handed) and the band has been knocked aside, revealing a shiny spot in the
middle of the boy’s forehead.
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Confirmation is also called the sacrament of the seal1 because it completes baptism
and marks the candidate’s soul with a permanent seal. The cape of the boy in the
Aminadab lunette has a yellow circle on his left arm. Confirmation is associated with the
color yellow, and was so at the time,3 so the yellow circle is apparently meant to represent
the mark of the seal. The Aminadab lunette thus harmonizes with the wall fresco below it,
which illustrates circumcision, since circumcision marks the flesh with a permanent seal.4
A mandatory part of confirmation has always been study, in particular of the catechism,
and the other adolescent in the first bay, in the Naason lunette across from the Aminadab
lunette, is accordingly busy studying.
So apparently the reason why the system of the other lunettes was not retained in
the first bay and the men and children found elsewhere were replaced by adolescents was
so as to have an allusion to confirmation in the altar area. An elegant consequence is that
the lunettes with only one name have only one male figure. A less happy result is that the
number of generations represented in the lunettes was reduced from forty to thirty-eight.
Thus in the first bay the first sacrament, the Eucharist, is represented physically by
the altar and figuratively in one of the adjacent medallions; the second sacrament, baptism, is illustrated on the lateral walls; and the third sacrament, confirmation, is referred
to in the lunettes. Clearly that the decoration in the first bay should deal with the three
sacraments of initiation was felt to be important, more important than that the lunettes
should continue to illustrate the Fifth Commandment here too.
The theme of the other lunettes is the Fifth Commandment because the Fifth
Commandment is a papalist argument, and in the Sistine Chapel a papalist argument
could be trumped only by a stronger papalist argument. The lunettes in the first bay refer
to confirmation rather than to the Fifth Commandment because alluding to the first three
1
Following 2 Cor 1:22.
In van der Weyden’s altarpiece of the seven sacraments in Antwerp the angel of confirmation is in yellow.
The other angels are in the standard liturgical colors, so at the time the liturgical color of confirmation was
yellow.
4
See Rom 4:11.
3
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sacraments in the first bay makes a basic papalist point. As we saw in the chapters on the
ideology of the ceiling, on the central scenes and on the medallions, the pseudoDionysius’s theory of hierarchy was an argument for papal primacy that was considered
fundamental, since the very structure of the central area illustrates hierarchy. The pseudoDionysius however wrote two works on the subject of hierarchy, ‘The Celestial Hierarchy’
and ‘The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy’. The Celestial Hierarchy is referred to in the central area
of the ceiling. Here we have a reference to Dionysius’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.
According to the pseudo-Dionysius, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, mirroring the celestial hierarchy, is similarly made up of nine orders divided into three groups of three
each. The first triad is composed of the three sacraments of initiation: baptism, the Eucharist, and confirmation; the second, of the three sacred orders: the bishops, the priests and
the deacons; and the third, of the three minor orders: the monks, the members of the confraternities, and the mass of the faithful. The representation of the three sacraments of
initiation in the first bay is an allusion to Dionysius’s ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Indeed the ecclesiastical hierarchy was indicated in the floor plan of the chapel,
and there too the first bay corresponds to the first triad. There were originally three distinct areas on different levels in the chapel: the altar area in the first bay on the highest
level, the area between the first bay and the screen a bit lower down, and the area between
the screen and the entrance lower yet. Later the screen was moved back and the two lower
areas were put on the same level. The three areas correspond to the three triads of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: the highest area containing the altar corresponds to the sacraments
of initiation, the middle area, where the priests were located, to the major orders, and the
area behind the screen, reserved to the non-ordinated, to the minor orders.
The throne of the Pope was situated on an extension of the altar area jutting out into the second bay so that the throne was on the same level as the altar area but partly also
inside the area of the clergy. The symbolism is clear: the Pope is partly of the clergy, but as
chief sacrificer on the same level as the sacraments and so above the other priests.
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Judah on the Sistine Ceiling
The man in the Salmon lunette is holding a staff. The knob of the staff is shaped
like a human head, and the man, baring his teeth, is looking at it with concentrated venom
and animosity. A piece of cloth originating from the man’s thigh is tied to the staff with a
knot. This mysterious figure seems to be an illustration of Judah as described in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen 49:8-12). The blessing reads:
Juda, te laudabunt fratres tui; manus tua in cervicibus inimicorum tuorum;
adorabunt te filii patris tui. Catulus leonis Juda. Ad prædam, fili mi, ascendisti.
Requiescens accubuisiti ut leo, et quasi leona, quia suscitabit eum? Non auferetur
sceptrum de Juda, et dux de femore ejus, donec veniat qui mittendus est; et ipse
erit expectatio gentium. Ligans ad vineam pullum suum, et ad vitem, o fili mi,
asinam suam. Lavabit in vinam stolam suam, et in sanguine uvæ pallium suum.
Pulchiores sunt oculi ejus vino, et dentes ejus lacte candidiores.
The man’s appearance follows this closely. His hand is holding an enemy by the
neck (manus tua in cervicibus inimicorum tuorum). His hose has been washed in wine—it
is pink—and his tunic in green grape-juice (lavabit in vinam stolam suam, at in sanguine
uvae pallium suum). He has a wide-brimmed hat on and is going up on an outdoors trip
(ad praedam, fili mi, ascendisti). He is rounding his back like a crouching lion stalking his
prey (requiescens accubuisti ut leo et quasi leona). He is holding tight to his scepter (non
auferetur sceptrum de Juda), and he leads or is lead from his thigh (dux de femore ejus),
to which his staff is tied (ligans). While his eyes may or may not be more beautiful than
wine (pulchiores sunt oculi ejus vino), he is in fact carrying a wine-cask, and his aggres-
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sively exposed teeth are whiter than milk (dentes ejus lacte candidiores).
Of all the figures on the ceiling the man with the staff is the most characteristically
pilgrim-like. Since the lunettes represent the Jews in general as pilgrims, the man with the
staff is also the emblematic Jew. Judah is the eponymous ancestor of the Jews, so it is fitting that the characteristic pilgrim should be Judah. Judah’s long nose and generally unpleasant appearance probably reflect the ambient anti-Semitism. That the Jews should be
simultaneously honored as ancestors of Christ and execrated as unbelievers is no more
contradictory here than elsewhere.
The papalist reason that Judah in particular is illustrated is that the blessing is taken to imply papal primacy. According to the text quoted above Judah’s brothers will praise
him, he will be their leader, and he will conserve the scepter. Judah is one of the twelve
tribes, and Peter is one of the twelve apostles. Judah being the leader (dux) of his brothers
parallels Peter being the leader of the Apostles. The implied conclusion is that the successor of Peter, the Pope, is the leader of the successors of the other apostles, that is, of the
whole Church. But Judah is more than a leader, he possesses the scepter, which means
that he, and implicitly the Pope, is the ruler. Saying that Judah will conserve the scepter is
saying that the Pope will conserve his rulership. In the case of the Popes the scepter assumes the form of a staff, and the person in the lunette is therefore holding a staff.
The reason the figure holding a staff was placed in this particular lunette is that in
the fresco below the central episode involves a staff and alludes to an oft-repeated argument in favor of papal primacy. The fresco represents the youth of Moses, and in the central episode a daughter of Jethro holds Moses’ staff for him while he waters the sheep. Moses providing the sheep with water is an allusion to papal primacy because one of the main
proofs advanced by the Popes for papal primacy was that according to Jn 21:16, Jesus said
to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep’ (‘Pasce agnos meos’).
The name ‘Judah’ has three distinct referents: Judah the fourth son of Jacob, the
tribe of Judah and the Kingdom of Judah. Jacob’s blessing was aimed at the tribe, and the
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man in the Salmon lunette represents the tribe of Judah. But Judah the son of Jacob and
the Kingdom of Judah are also alluded to in the lunettes.
Judah the son of Jacob is (or rather was) underlined in the destroyed lunettes on
the altar wall. Once the decision had been made to consecrate a lunette each to Aminadab
and Naason, seven names had to be fitted into the two lunettes on the altar wall. There
were two ways of distributing the seven names: three in the first lunette and four in the
second or four in the first lunette and three in the second. Since the first three ancestors
are the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it would have been natural to isolate
these names and inscribe three names in the first lunette and four in the second. The ceiling, however, opted for the second solution and adjoined the name of Judah to those of the
Patriarchs in the first lunette. This constitutes a signal honor for Judah. The lunettes honor Judah the son of Jacob for the same reason they honor the Tribe of Judah.
The Kingdom of Judah too is alluded to in the lunettes, which mark both its beginning and its end. For apportioning the tablets in the side lunettes over the altar area to
Aminadab and Naason had another consequence, besides the squeezing of the first seven
names into only two lunettes. There were now too few names left for the lunettes over the
lateral walls, and there had to be one tablet with only two names instead of three. The tablet chosen for this distinction was Roboam-Abias. Roboam was the first King of Judah. By
distinguishing this lunette the ceiling marks the beginning of the Kingdom of Judah.
The end of the Kingdom of Judah is also noted. The series of names in the lunettes
criss-cross the chapel with perfect regularity, except once. After Amon, the names Iosias,
Iechonias and Salathiel are in the next lunette on the same side of the chapel instead of
across on the other side. This break in regularity corresponds to a break in regularity in
Matthew. Matthew divides the series of ancestors into three subseries of fourteen generations each: from Abraham to David, from David to Iechonias and the Babylonian Captivity, and from Iechomias and the Babylonian Captivity to Christ. (The total number of generations is forty and not forty-two because David and Iechonias are mentioned twice in the
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list, as they both close and open a subseries.) It has been plausibly suggested that the
break in the lunettes was intended to note the break in Matthew at the Babylonian Captivity. The Babylonian Captivity put an end to the Kingdom of Judah, so the lunettes mark
the end as well as the beginning of the Kingdom of Judah.
The lunettes and the wall frescoes below them
Globally the lunettes harmonize with the titles over the wall frescoes lower down
on the walls because most of the titles mention the law, and the lunettes are related to the
law because they illustrate the Fifth Commandment, which is part of the law.
In some lunettes the form of some of the figures seems to have been suggested by
the frescoes directly below them. As we saw, this is true as regards the Aminadab and
Naason lunettes and the Salmon lunette. Here are other examples where this is the case:
1. The woman in the Achim lunette is preparing food. She harmonizes with the scene below the lunette, the Testament of Moses, because in the Testament of Moses there is
a receptacle for food, presumably manna, under Moses. Preparing food is a basic womanly
function that had be illustrated in some lunette, and one may assume that it was placed
here because the fresco below the lunette contains a reference to food.
2. The man in the Jesse lunette wears a head covering which conceals his ears and
has a shiny point on top. This covering seems to have been inspired by the head covering
of the High Priest in the fresco below, which likewise has flaps over his ears and a shiny
point on top. Another borrowing in the lunette is the gesture of the figure in the background who hands the man a plate. This figure repeats the gesture of the acolyte in the
fresco to the right of the High Priest, who similarly hands the High Priest a plate.
While the left half of the lunette is related to the forms of the wall fresco below, the
right half of the lunette and the triangle above the lunette are connected to its contents.
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Both the woman in the right half of the lunette and the woman in the triangle above the
lunette are occupied with making new clothes: The woman in the right half of the lunette
is spinning and the woman in the triangle over the lunette is cutting cloth. The subject of
the central episode in the wall fresco below is the purification of the leper, as described in
Lev 14. The purification of the leper forms a part of the rules governing general purification from leprosy, which includes the purification of infected cloth. When the cloth is irremediably infected it must be destroyed (Lev 13:47-52), and new clothes replace the old.
The woman spinning in right half of the lunette and the woman cutting cloth in the triangle above the lunette seem to have been placed above the purification from leprosy scene
because they depict stages in the making of new clothes. The women’s facial expressions
accord with this interpretation: The woman in the lunette is sad because she lost her old
clothes, and the woman in the triangle is happy because she’s getting new ones.
3. The man in the Asa lunette has a strange, deeply bronzed face. He is wearing a
long cloak suitable for voyages and exotic looking pantaloons: hose was common at the
time, but loose pantaloons tied about the ankles like these did not exist except in Turkey1.
The man is writing a letter (the piece of paper or parchment is too small to be anything
else), which also implies that he is abroad. The letter begins with a cross on top.
The wall fresco below the lunette depicts the calling of the Apostles, and the watery
background of the fresco stretches insistently out into the distance, in a quite different
manner from the background landscapes in the other frescoes. The waterway leading far
away is in keeping with the role of the Apostles, which was to spread the faith ‘in all countries’. This role is underlined in the titles over the wall frescoes, which term the New Law
the ‘Evangelical Law’.
All this suggests that the man in the Asa lunette is fulfilling Jesus’ posthumous
charge to the Apostles to evangelize the universe, that is, that he is a missionary. As we
1
And among German peasants, but the man in the Asa lunette is not a peasant.
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saw in the section dealing with Jonah, missionary activity is a major theme of the ceiling.
From the beginning missionary activity was carried on and directed through letters, as
attested by the epistles of St. Paul, and we can imagine that the letter the man is writing is
an epistle or an answer to one. The cross by which the letter begins reinforces this interpretation.
The Corner Scenes
The frescoes in the corner spaces illustrate the stories of Esther, of the bronze serpent in the desert, of Judith and Holophernes, and of David and Goliath. In these episodes
the Jews were threatened with annihilation (in the Esther and brazen serpent stories in
the front) and loss of independence (in the Judith and David scenes in the back) and were
saved in extremis. Precisely, the corner scenes depict the dire chastisements that befell
those whose actions would have terminated Jewish history: Haman, the rebels in the desert who wished to return to Egypt, Goliath and Holophernes. That Jewish history should
continue to unfold was important from the Christian point of view because otherwise the
Incarnation could not take place as planned. Moreover the two corner scenes at the altar
end of the chapel exalt the cross, and the four scenes also have a papalist moral.
The papalist moral of the corner spaces is that the Pope is the bridegroom of the
Church, and that those who rebel against the Pope and the Church will be severely punished. Esther and Judith are types both of Mary and of the Church, since Mary is often
identified with the Church. In papal pronouncements the Popes systematically substituted
themselves for Christ and called the Church their own bride, and in the Sistine Chapel Moses and David are types of the Pope rather than Christ: on the left wall Moses represents
the Pope since Moses was the supreme legislator and the present supreme legislator is the
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Pope,1 and in the fourth medallion David stands for the Pope because David was the emblematic Biblical King and according to Innocent IV the Biblical Kings were Vicars of God
and so precursors of the Popes.
When Mary is coupled with Christ and presented as his bride, the meaning is that
the Church is the bride of Christ. This is the case here, since here the types of Mary and of
the Church, Esther and Judith, are presented as brides of the types of Christ and of the
Pope, Moses and David: brides habitually sit to the right of their husbands, and both over
the altar and entrance walls the stories of Esther and of Judith are to the right of the stories of Moses and of David, not certainly from our point of view but from theirs. In the
Sistine Chapel Moses and David stand for the Pope rather than Christ, so the meaning of
the arrangement of the corner scenes is that the Church is the Bride of the Pope.
All four corner scenes insist on the violent punishments incurred by those who set
themselves up against the types of the Popes and the Church. The punishment of the Jews
who rebelled against Moses and wished to return to Egypt fills most of the right corner
space, and the punishment of Haman, who tried to subvert Queen Esther, is the central
element of the left corner space. At the entrance end of the chapel the scene in the right
corner (when facing the entrance) depicts the beheading Goliath rather than David aiming
a sling at him, and both Holophernes’s detached head and headless body are displayed
prominently in the left corner.
So the point of the four scenes is to show the punishment of the villains rather than
to glorify the Biblical heroes. At the front end of the chapel in the Esther story Esther is a
small figure at the extreme left and Mordecai is missing, and in the Brazen Serpent scene
Moses is omitted. On the back wall the heroes are present but not glorified: David hacking
off Goliath’s head is an expressionless butcher, and Judith turns her back to us.
The insistence on the punishment aspect of the story and the identity of the ones
1
See below in the section on the wall frescoes.
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being punished has a papalist moral. The papalist interpretation of the corner scenes is
that they refer to the Pope and his bride, the Church. The purpose of the punishments in
the corner scenes is not so much to prove the coerciveness of the divine law, as in the central scenes, but rather to show that that those who set themselves up against the Pope and
the Church will come to a bad end. The moral and/or application to current events of the
brazen serpent scene is that God will protect the Pope from a rebellion such as that of the
Council of Pisa, and that its participants will pay dearly their disloyalty.
The papalist condemnation of revolt against divinely ordained institutional authority explains the prominence of the two figures talking to each other inside a doorway in the
center of the Esther scene. These are the other villains of the story of Esther after Haman,
the eunuch guardians of the doorsill (‘janitores’) Bagathan and Thares,1 who plotted to kill
the King (Est 2:21-23). The two figures must be Bagathan and Thares because the gestures
of the figures are those of plotters, and they are inside a doorway because Bagathan and
Thares were guardians of the doorsill. Their being eunuchs explains their somewhat effeminate appearance.2 In the background on the right the sleepless King Assuerus is having read to him how Mordecai denounced the two plotters (Chap. 6), and the King points
to Bagathan and Thares to make it clear that what he is hearing is their story. Bagathan
and Thares were of course executed.
At the extreme left of the Esther scene Esther is denouncing Haman to the King
during supper (Chap. 7). On the right of the table Haman raises his arms in stupefaction
(‘illico obstupuit’), and the King, behind the table, points at Haman in much the same way
that he pointed at Bagathan and Thares from his bed at the extreme right of the scene. The
King behind the table is clearly the same man as the King in his bed, and Haman on the
right of the table as Haman on his tree. So both the extreme left and the extreme right of
1
These are their names in the Vulgate. The King James Version follows the Masoretic text and calls them
Bigthan and Teresh. The disparity is due to the imprecision of ancient Hebrew notation.
2
It is sometimes suggested that one of the figures is Mordecai, but Mordecai was Esther’s uncle, and so not a
young man. Besides, if one of them is Mordecai, then who is the other?
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the Esther fresco recount approvingly denunciations to the authorities.
The story of Bagathan and Thares occupies the whole of the right half of the Esther
scene, and Bagathan and Thares inside their doorway are almost as big and as central as
Haman on his tree. The importance accorded to the two traitors shows that for whoever
was responsible for the composition of the fresco the plotting of Bagathan and Thares
against the King was as blameworthy as the plotting of Haman against Queen Esther and
the Jews. Esther is a type of the Church, so treason to her husband is treason to the
Church’s bridegroom, to wit, the Pope.
The message of the corner spaces at the altar end of the ceiling, then, is a denunciation of disloyalty to the Pope and to the Church. The scene in the right corner space shows
how an impious revolt against the authority of Moses was quashed and the stories in the
left corner space recount two treasonous actions against the King and the Queen hatched
by their subordinates. Moses is a type of the Pope and Esther is a type of the Church, so
the common moral of the corner spaces is a condemnation of disloyalty to the Pope and to
the Church.
The two corner scenes at the altar end of the chapel also exalt the cross. In both
scenes the point is that the Jews were saved from annihilation through the action of a proto-cross. The central and most prominent element in the scene in the left corner is the
crucifixion of Haman and the central and most prominent element in the scene in the right
corner is the brazen serpent raised on its pole. The execution of Haman saved the Jews
from his preparations to exterminate them, and looking at the raised serpent saved the
Jews who repented of their rebellion from perishing of snakebite in the desert. The raised
serpent has always been understood as a figure of the cross because Jesus said that ‘Sicut
Moyses exaltavit serpentem in deserto, ita exaltari oportet Filium hominis, ut omnis qui
credit in ipsum non pereat, sed habeat vitam æternam’, that is, ‘just as Moses raised the
serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man must be raised, so that all who believe in him
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should not perish, but have eternal life’ (Jn 3:14).
The reference to the cross in the Esther scene is just as clear. In the Hebrew Bible
and according to most interpretations of the Vulgate Haman was hanged. Here the fresco
follows a minority reading that he was crucified.1 The reason this version was preferred
was so that the scene in the left corner should have the same moral as the scene in the
right corner, that is, that prototypes of the cross were instruments of salvation already in
Old Testament times. This is why the execution of Haman was interpreted as a crucifixion,
and why the crucifixion of Haman is the central and most prominent element of the Esther
scene. Haman is crucified on a tree because the King ordered that Haman be punished on
the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai: ‘En lignum quod paraverat Mardochæo … dixit
rex, Appendite eum in eo’ (Est 7:9-10).
The Message of the Wall Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
The doctrine that the Pope is the supreme human legislator had already been expressed in the Sistine Chapel in the frescoes painted on the walls of the chapel in the
1480’s, which recount the lives of Moses and of Jesus. To have an extended life of Moses in
1
‘Crux’ in Est 8:7 (‘et ipsum jussi affigi cruci’) is interpreted not as gallows but as a cross.
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parallel and as a pendant to a life of Christ is extremely rare and possibly unique. Why the
walls of the Sistine Chapel couple Moses and Jesus can be inferred from the titles or ‘tituli’
over the frescoes.
The titles were uncovered in the late sixties of the twentieth century.1 Only twelve
titles subsist. The two originally on the altar wall were destroyed when Michelangelo
painted the Last Judgment, and the two titles on the entrance wall were lost when the two
scenes there were repainted in the later sixteenth century.
The six surviving titles over the Moses series read: 1. OBSERVATIO ANTIQVE
REGENERATIONIS A MOISE PER CIRCONCISIONEM. 2. TEMPTATIO MOISI LEGIS
SCRIPTAE LATORIS. 3. CONGREGATIO POPVLI A MOISE LEGEM SCRIPTAM ACCEPTVRI. 4. PROMVLGATIO LEGIS SCRIPTE PER MOISEM. 5. CONTVRBATIO MOISI
LEGIS SCRIPTAE LATORIS. 6. REPLICATIO LEGIS SCRIPTAE A MOISE.
The titles over the life of Jesus are 1. INSTITVTIO NOVAE REGENERATIONIS A
CHRISTO PER BAPTISMO. 2. TEMPTATIO IESV CHRISTI LATORIS EVANGELICAE
LEGIS. 3. CONGREGATIO POPVLI LEGEM EVANGELICAM ACCEPTVRI. 4. PROMVLGATIO EVANGELICAE LEGIS PER CHRISTI. 5. CONTVRBATIO IESV CHRISTI LEGISLATORIS. 6. REPLICATIO LEGIS EVANGELICAE A CHRISTO.
All the titles not in the first bay (i.e., ten out of twelve) mention either the written
law or the evangelical law, and both Moses and Jesus are insistently presented as the legislators of the two laws. This is significant because normally Jesus is regarded not as lawmaker but as the liberator from the law. It follows that the theme of the wall frescoes is
not, as is usually thought, the Eras of Law and of Grace, but rather the two revealed divine
laws, the Old Law and the New Law. Indeed this was recognized at the time.1 This is why
Moses was given, so to speak, equal time with Jesus. Presenting Moses and Christ in parallel and according them the same amount of wall space is unusual and perhaps unique, but
1
See D. Redig de Campos, ‘I ‘tituli’ degli affreschi del Quattrocento nella Cappella Sistina’, in ‘Studi di
Storia dell’ Arte in onore di Valerio Maiani’, Naples 1972, p. 113-121.
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it is inescapable if the theme of the wall decoration is the revealed divine law.
The theme of the wall frescoes is the revealed divine law because a major argument
for papal primacy was that the Popes are the successors of the two legislators of the revealed divine law. In his book on the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo Ettlinger showed
that the message of the wall frescoes is that the Popes are the successors of Moses and of
Christ, and his thesis was that the frescoes are asserting papal primacy.2 The titles confirm
his thesis because they present Moses and Jesus in their roles of supreme legislators. By
insisting that Moses and Jesus were the supreme legislators the titles indicate that their
successors the Popes are similarly the supreme legislators. To be the supreme legislator is
to possess supreme political authority on earth, so the walls are affirming papal primacy.
The papalist moral that the Pope is the present supreme lawmaker explains first,
why Moses is so honored in the chapel, and second, why the ceiling is so preoccupied with
law. Augustinus Triumphus says it most pithily: ‘Nulla lex populo christiano est danda nisi
papae auctoritate, sicut nec aliqua lex fuit data populo Israelitico nisi mediante Moyse.’4
That is, ‘No law is to be given to the Christian People except with papal authority, just as in
no way was law given to the Jewish People except through Moses’.
The fifth scenes on the walls of the Chapel
That the power to govern is entrusted exclusively into the care of the Pope is shown
explicitly in the fifth scenes on either side of the chapel, counting from the altar wall. On
the left wall Moses, the legislator of the written law, transfers to Aaron (who is dressed in
full papal regalia) his powers to legislate and to punish law-breakers. Opposite this scene
on the right wall Jesus, the legislator of the evangelical law, hands over the keys to Peter.
1
See John Shearman, ‘The Fresco Decoration of Sixtus IV’, in Giacometti, pp. 22-87, p. 50.
See L. D. Ettlinger, ‘The Sistine Chapel Before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy’, Oxford 1965. Ettlinger’s book very unfortunately came out just before the titles over the wall frescoes were
rediscovered.
4
Summa 44 i.
2
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The thesis of the two frescoes is that the Pope, as successor to Aaron and Peter, inherits
the law-making authority they received from Moses and Jesus.1
Julius II called the cardinals of the Council of Pisa who tried to depose him ‘children of Dathan and Abiram’.1 Dathan and Abiram rebelled against Moses, and their punishment is depicted graphically in the fifth scene on the left side, the Punishment of Korah,
Dathan and Abiram. The scene shows that rebels to the precursors of the Popes were severely chastised and confutes Marsilius’s assertion that the divine law is not coercive. It
associates the Popes with the punitive aspect of the law precisely because the power to
punish, or lack of it, is the weak point in the papalist claim to legal primacy. The inscription on the triumphal arch, NEMO SIBI ASSUMMAT HONOREM NISI VOCATUS A DEO
TANQUAM ARON, is almost explicitly an assertion of papal primacy.
In the fifth scene on the right wall Jesus gives the keys to Peter. The Apostles are
present to underline and emphasize that Jesus is giving the keys not to the Apostles, either
as a group or individually, but to Peter alone. Peter stands for the Roman Church and the
Apostles represent the various local churches founded by them. The scene shows that the
powers devolved by Christ were given exclusively to the Bishop of Rome and not to the
other bishops, i.e., to the papacy and not to the General Council.
The building in the background is the Jewish Temple: it portrays the eight-sided
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which in Christian travel guides was identified as the
Temple of Solomon, since it was in fact built on the site of the Temple. The inscriptions on
the two triumphal arches put together read: IMMENSV[M] SALAMO[NIS] TEMPLVM TV
HOC QVARTE SACRASTI SIXTE OPIBVS DISPAR RELIGIONE PRIOR. Aaron, who as
the first High Priest was the forerunner of the Pope, is represented in the facing fresco
across on the other side of the chapel, the Punishment of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. The
forerunner of the Church, the Temple, is depicted in the scene across from Aaron because
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the Pope and the Church form a bridal couple. The ceiling's systematic coupling of the
Pope and the Church is thus already in evidence in the wall frescos.
The Temple has two functions in this scene. The first is to emphasize that what Jesus is doing in the foreground is to appoint Peter, and hence the Popes his successors, to
head the the successor of the Temple, i.e., the Church. The second function of the Temple
has to do with the two episodes represented in the background. The episode on the left
shows Christ giving a coin to a Roman soldier and the one on the right the Jews stoning
Jesus (Jn 8:59 and 10:31). By choosing to represent these particular episodes in this fresco
and insisting that they took place on the Temple grounds, two papalist points are made.
The point of the episode on the left is that the temporal power derives from the
spiritual power, and in particular from a High Priest. The group on the left illustrates the
story where spies sent by the chief priests asked Jesus if it was licit to pay taxes to Caesar,
and Jesus took a coin, showed them the portrait of Caesar on the coin, and said, ‘Render
unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s’. In the fresco the episode is simplified and dramatized:
the spies are eliminated and Jesus is shown giving directly the coin to a soldier.
The imperialists interpreted Jesus’ sally to mean that Jesus left temporal affairs to
the temporal rulers and that therefore the Pope had no say in these matters. The wall fresco’s answer is that when Jesus made his pronouncement he was acting as High Priest, and
that Caesar and his successors the temporal rulers hold their powers from Christ and his
successors as High Priest, the Popes. Jesus was not a descendant of Aaron, and so not a
priest in the normal sense, but according to Chapters 5-7 of Hebrews Jesus was a High
Priest and the ‘priest of the order of Melchisedec’ of Ps 110:4 (109:4 in the Vulgate). Melchisedec was not even a Jew but is still called a High Priest in the Old Testament.
The scene takes place on the Temple grounds to make it clear that here Jesus is acting in his role as High Priest. In the foreground Jesus grants Peter his powers. The proximity of the two events is intended to imply that the powers exercised by the temporal rul1
J. D. Mansi, ‘Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio’, Florence 1759f., XXXII 684 C.
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ers derive from the Pope. Jesus makes Peter and his successors the Popes vicars of God in
the foreground and in the background he says, ‘Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s’,
thus showing that he decides what is in Caesar’s power and what is not, and that Caesar
receives his powers from him. Since the Pope is the successor of Peter as Vicar of God, he
inherits Christ’s powers to decide what is in Caesar’s power and what is not. Therefore the
temporal rulers hold their powers from him.
Jesus is giving a coin to a soldier. In the New Testament the question Christ was
asked to answer was whether or not to pay the tax collector, so the fresco is taking liberties
with the text of the Evangelists. As usual, this is to make a papalist point. Soldiers represent the coercive might of the temporal rulers, and Marsilius argued that the Pope is no
legislator because he has no coercive powers to enforce his laws, while the temporal rulers
do. By having Christ give the coin to a soldier and having him do it in his role as High
Priest, the fresco proclaims that a High Priest granted the temporal rulers the means of
maintaining their coercive powers. The temporal power then depends on the spiritual
power, contrary to what Marsilius said. Concretely, the fresco illustrates Boniface VIII’s
statement in ‘Unam sanctam’ that ‘gladius … materialis vero … manu regum et militium
[est], sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis’ (the temporal sword is in the hand of the
kings and the military, but for the benefit of and at the tolerance of the priests).
The second point made in the background is that to attack the Pope is blasphemous. On the right the background depicts the stoning of Jesus on the Temple grounds.
This episode was very rarely illustrated in church decorations, so its presence here is significant. It was clearly felt to be important, because the title above the fresco, CONTVRBATIO IESV CHRISTI LEGISLATORIS, refers to it and not to the other stories in the fresco. This episode is highlighted because the subject of the facing fresco on the other side of
the chapel is the armed revolt of Korah, Dathan and Abiram against Moses. In both cases
the point is that to employ violence against the supreme legislators is blasphemous. Since
the Pope is the present supreme legislator, it follows that armed opposition to the Pope is
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blasphemous.
The Jews are stoning Christ on the Temple grounds, so here Christ is in his role as
High Priest in the same way that Christ is a High Priest in the ‘render unto Caesar that
which is Caesar’s’ episode, which also takes place on the Temple grounds. So it is specifically as High Priest that Christ is being stoned. The Pope is the present High Priest, and,
as is shown in the foreground, Christ's substitute and replacement on earth. The moral of
the scene then is that to attack the Pope is to attack Christ, following Luke 10:16, where
Jesus says to his envoys, ‘Qui vos spernit, me spernit’ (he who spurns you, spurns me).
The title over the fifth scene reads: CONTURBATIO IESU CHRISTI LEGISLATORIS. Most of the titles present Christ as legislator, but in the other titles he is ‘the legislator
of the evangelical law’, whereas here he is ‘the legislator’ with no further qualification. In
the fifth scene Christ is identified with the Pope especially closely: in the background he
appears in his role as High Priest, and in the main episode in the foreground he makes
Peter his Vicar on earth. By omitting the words ‘of the evangelical law’ and calling Christ
‘the legislator’ tout court the title recalls that the Pope is similarly ‘the legislator’.
Who drew up the program of the Sistine Ceiling?
© 2007 by Elhanan Motzkin
There are three possible answers to the question of who drew up the program of
the Sistine ceiling. The first is that Michelangelo prepared it himself, with at most some
minor outside help. The second is that the program is due to an active collaboration between Michelangelo and a learned theologian. And the third is that a theologian drew up
the program and left only minor points to Michelangelo’s discretion and judgment.
The first position is the traditional one. Michelangelo himself said that he was allowed to do ‘ciò che io volevo’ when painting the ceiling, which means ‘what I wanted’.
‘What I wanted’ is normally understood to mean ‘whatever I wanted’, i.e., Michelangelo is
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claiming that he was given a free hand. That he could do this is already significant, because it implies that he thought that he would have no difficulty in being believed, which
indeed was the case. That an artist should be allowed to decide by himself what to paint on
the ceiling of the most prestigious chapel of the Pope was not then considered as ipso facto
absurd or ridiculous at the time.
If Michelangelo was permitted to paint whatever he wanted on the ceiling, then the
program reflects his thought and beliefs and is limited by the range of his interests and the
extent of his knowledge. As regards his interests and knowledge,1 according to his contemtemporaries Michelangelo was a great expert on Dante, and he is supposed to have been a
constant reader of both the Old and New Testaments. He is also said to have been an admirer of Savonarola. No contemporary witness or commentator linked Michelangelo to
Plato or to any of the Renaissance Neoplatonists, but modern scholarship has deduced a
Neoplatonic outlook from his literary and, rather circularly, from his artistic works.
During most of the twentieth century the weight of opinion among experts was that
Michelangelo was a thoroughgoing Neoplatonist, that he suffused the decoration with Neoplatonic doctrines and theories, and that the program was due to him alone. More recent
judgments have tended to see recondite theological references on the ceiling.1 Some, notably Edgar Wind, have concluded that a professional theologian drew up at least the main
lines of the program. Others assert that on the contrary the ceiling’s theological contents
express Michelangelo’s own views.2
The most forceful argument in favor of the program being by Michelangelo alone is
due to Charles Hope. Hope points out that the composition of the sixth medallion, which
represents Alexander the Great on his knees before a high priest, is taken from an illustration in the Malermi Bible. The Malermi Bible was an Italian translation of the Bible,
which, uniquely, contained the story of Alexander. Hope says that it is unimaginable that a
1
For a discussion of Michelangelo’s knowledge, see David Summers, ‘Michelangelo and the Language of
Art’, Princeton 1981, pp. 8-17.
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theologian would have used or even countenanced using a story present only in a popular
Italian version of the Bible.3 He concludes that Michelangelo was allowed to choose the
stories represented on the ceiling with no supervision. This is not quite the same as saying
that Michelangelo was also permitted to establish the theme of the decoration, but it
comes pretty close to it. Hope sees nothing in the program that would require us to think
that someone else must have participated in its elaboration.
To this argument one may reply that though many of the medallion compositions
were taken from the Malermi Bible, some were not. It follows that Hope’s vision of Michelangelo riffling through the Malermi Bible in search of stories to illustrate is not tenable, because if the scenes on the medallions had been chosen in this way, then all the medallions would be copies of Malermi Bible illustrations. This however is not the case. Some
of the episodes depicted on the medallions are not illustrated in the Malermi Bible, while
other medallions repeat parts of illustrations or are drawn from different woodcuts. It follows from this that the subjects of the scenes on the medallions must have been fixed in
advance and then given to Michelangelo to illustrate. To save time and energy, Michelangelo looked through the Malermi Bible to see if it contained an illustration of the given
story. If it did, he copied the composition, and when it did not, he had no choice but to
adapt another or invent a new one.
From the fact that the composition of the sixth medallion repeats a Malermi Bible
illustration, Hope infers that the Alexander story was used on the ceiling because the Malermi Bible contained an illustration of it. But this conclusion does not by any means follow. The Emperor Alexander on his knees before a High Priest is a totally irresistible subject for a papalist theologian. A theologian drawing up a papalist and anti-imperialist pro-
1
Most egregiously in Heinrich Pfeiffer, ‘La Sistina Svelata’, Jaca Books 2007.
See, for example, Timothy Verdon, ‘Michelangelo Teologo’, Milan 2005, pp. 182-223.
3
‘It is hard to imagine that such an iconographic adviser, asked for subjects for the medallions, would have
leafed through a handy illustrated Italian translation of the Bible looking for ideas, and even harder to believe
that he would have selected the episode of Alexander before the High Priest, which is an interpolation by
Malermi not mentioned in the Vulgate at all.’ Hope, in Wallace, p. 289.
2
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gram would have thought of Alexander on his knees before a high priest quite naturally.
Even if the theologian was reminded of the story while reading the Malermi Bible (Italian
theologians do sometimes read Italian Bibles), only a papalist would have pounced on it.
Since the Alexander story is non-scriptural and is not illustrated in other churches,
it should not normally occur to anyone to illustrate it here if the program was a normal
one. Its presence here can therefore only be due to the Alexander story’s papalist implications. The author of the program must then have been papalist. But Michelangelo was not,
so far as we know, papalist and may even have been anti-papalist. Michelangelo was an
expert on and a fervent admirer of Dante, who was notoriously imperialist and antipapalist. Dante wrote a long imperialist treatise, ‘Monarchia’, and was expelled from Florence for his anti-papalist views, spending the rest of his life in exile. So it is not plausible
that Michelanglo would have chosen on his own initiative to illustrate the ultra-papalist
story of Alexander if the choice of subjects were left up to him. Indeed, the fact that this
echt-papalist episode is present on the ceiling, far from constituting evidence that Michelangelo was responsible for the program, shows that the subjects of the scenes, both in the
medallions and elsewhere on the ceiling, must have been determined by someone else.
Contrary to what Hope asserts, the non-scriptural nature of the Alexander story
does not imply that a theologian would have rejected it. Innocent IV’s argument was historical: history shows that the Popes succeeded God, Noah, etc., as supreme legislators.
Innocent IV accepts the Bible is true history, and he utilizes it as a historical source. But
even for him, and certainly for his Renaissance successors, there are also true historical
facts outside the Vulgate, and there is nothing impious in using them to back up your case.
Secular non-Biblical characters appear elsewhere in church decorations if their actions
had an impact on sacred history, for example Roman emperors under the saints they persecuted at Chartres.
Another argument for Michelangelo being the author of the program is that from
what we know of his character it is hard to see him accepting orders meekly, since he suf-
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fered no interference when painting the Last Judgment. But the Last Judgment was painted a quarter-century after the ceiling. For whether or not Michelangelo was in a position to
impose his will when the ceiling was painted we have only his word for it, since Condivi
and Vasari were only repeating what he told them when they assert that he was.
Now Michelangelo’s testimony concerning the ceiling, as transmitted by Condivi
and Vasari, is not always reliable, since some of the things he told them were demonstrably false, for example that he used only the buon fresco technique on the ceiling, when
some of the painting is al secco, or that he dismissed his assistants almost immediately
and painted the ceiling alone, when some of the medallions were manifestly executed by
assistants. Michelangelo was thus retrospectively prone to gild the lily as regards the historical facts surrounding the painting of the ceiling.
Contemporary reports regarding Michelangelo’s standing at the papal court and
capacity for independent action in 1508-1512 are unfortunately almost inexistent. This
negative fact indicates already that he was not yet quite as glorious as he was later to become. His prestige was unsurprisingly much greater after he had painted the ceiling. One
concrete bit of evidence is a letter from Michelangelo to his father dated October 4, 1511, in
which Michelangelo asks his father to pray God that he may satisfy the Pope. This humble
request contrasts sharply with the arrogant and self-assured attitude he developed later,
and suggests that the standing Condivi and Vasari claim he had at the time was inflated. A
corollary of our result, then, is that we should reevaluate downward our assessment of
Michelangelo’s status at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
It is true that including an illustration of Alexander kneeling before a high priest on
the ceiling would have occurred to anyone drawing up a papalist program, and not only to
a theologian. In particular it could have occurred to Michelangelo if he were charged with
drawing up a program having papalism as its theme. Could Michelangelo then have been
the author after all, if not of the theme of the program, at least of the specific choices?
The usual position at present concerning the program is that it is due to Michelan-
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gelo working in collaboration with a professional theologian. This compromise solution
has the advantage of allowing one to assert at the same time the presence of some fairly
esoteric and/or obscure theological references on the ceiling and to have Michelangelo
keep the final say as regards the program. The problem is that by saying that he was permitted to do ‘cio che io volevo’ on the ceiling, Michelangelo seems to be claiming sole authorship. Was he lying? To save us from that unpleasant conclusion, it has been suggested
that the meaning of ‘ciò che io volevo’ may have been ‘that which I had proposed’ rather
than ‘whatever I wanted’. The Italians I have consulted doubt that such an interpretation
is possible, but if it were, Michelangelo may then only have been saying that the Pope finally accepted his project, rather than claiming that he was its sole author and inventor. A
theologian may then have helped him to prepare the program.
But was this theologian a mere helper? We have seen that the program is singlemindedly papalist, both in theme and in the details of its realization. Which is likelier, that
the papalist theme was due to a theologian or to Michelangelo? The answer is obvious.
More fundamentally, it seems to me implausible that a layman artist, however glorious, would have been entrusted with any but the most minor details of an ideological
program whose thesis was so centrally important to the papacy and at the same time was
not the usual Christian Christological argumentation. While Michelangelo may have had a
good knowledge of normal Christian apologetics, many features in the frescoes presuppose
a precise technical acquaintance with the theological arguments of Innocent IV and of
Boniface VIII which Michelangelo is unlikely to have possessed. Only a theologian would
have been aware of all the facets of papalist theory expressed on the ceiling through the
choice of subjects and their arrangement and in some of the details. But if a theologian
was responsible for the theme of the program, for the choice of specific subjects, and for
some aspects of the compositions of the scenes, then we cannot honestly say that the program is in any meaningful sense Michelangelo’s.
It follows from all this that there must have been a theologian involved in drawing
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up the program, and that he was much more than a mere adviser. When Michelangelo said
that he was allowed to do ‘cio che io volevo’ on the ceiling, however one interprets the
phrase, he was simply lying. Certainly all these nude young men correspond to Michelangelo’s known tastes, but rather than conclude from their presence that he was permitted to
establish the program by himself, we note more narrowly that he took full advantage of the
opportunities the program gave him to express these tastes. Michelangelo may have been
allowed to decide where to place the various episodes, because their placements usually
depend on formal criteria that have no theological significance. But this is the extent of his
contribution to the program. The rest is the work of our theologian. The second Council of
Nicea (787) famously decreed that ‘the composition of religious images is not left to the
inspiration of the artist. It proceeds from the principles posed by the Catholic Church and
religious tradition. Art alone belongs to the painter, and the composition to the Fathers.’1
The Sistine ceiling observes this injunction to the letter.
Who could that theologian have been? Now whoever drew up the program of the
ceiling, there was one professional theologian who had to review it as part of his functions.
This was the official theologian of the papal court, the Magister sacri palatii apostolici, or
Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace.1 Over the centuries the duties of the Master of the
Sacred Palace fluctuated. At the time they included checking all official statements made
by members of the Papal Curia for their theological orthodoxy. One of the tasks of the
Master of the Sacred Palace was to supervise all preaching activity in the Sistine Chapel.
He appointed the preachers, and he was supposed to read, censor and, if necessary, rewrite every single one of their sermons beforehand. It seems safe to presume that he had
to check and approve of the program of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as well.
So the Master of the Sacred Palace was a professional theologian who was acquainted with the program of the ceiling and who even had to approve it. We were search-
1
Synod Nicaea II, Actio VI, 331, 832.
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ing for a theologian likely to have drawn up the program. Since the message of the ceiling
is rehashed papalism and the program contains no deep philosophical ideas calling for
special erudition and/or originality, the most economical solution (and by Occam’s razor,
the best) would be to presume that this theologian was the Master of the Sacred Palace
himself. An additional consideration in favor of the Master of the Sacred Palace being involved in the matter is that while there were many people in Rome at the time capable of
drawing up the program, only the Pope and the Master of the Sacred Palace could give
Michelangelo orders concerning the ceiling he had to obey.
The first Master of the Sacred Palace was, or rather, was thought at the time to
have been, St. Dominic, and by a fifteenth-century papal fiat every Master was statutorily a
Dominican. During the reign of Julius II the Master of the Sacred Palace was Giovanni
Rafanelli, O.P., who held the office from 1503 to his death in 1515.2
Rafanelli is a shadowy figure, and nothing specific is known about his personal ideas, since not a single copy of any of his printed works has survived.3 Besides the facts that
he was a Dominican and an inquisitor, it is known that he came from Ferrara, that he had
a good knowledge of history, and that he was a prized preacher and orator. Rafanelli must
have been very clever or very easy-going or both, since he was evidently on good terms
both with Alexander VI, who appointed him, and with Alexander VI’s arch-enemy Julius
II, who kept him to the end, as did Julius II’s successor, Leo X.
Two points in this meager list are at least consistent with his being the author of
the program: his being a Dominican preacher and his dying in 1515. His dying in 1515
means that he was the official theologian of the papal court at the beginning of the Fifth
1
For a history of this office, see R. Creytens, ‘Le Studium Romanae Curiae et le Maître du Sacré Palais’, in
Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum XII (1942), p. 5-83.
2
See Michael Tavuzzi, ‘Giovanni Rafanelli da Ferrara, O.P.’, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 67
(1997), p. 113-149.
3
The disappearance of these writings is not recent. Already in the eighteenth century J. Quetif and J. Echard,
quoting earlier authors, report: ‘De scripsis hujus Joannis nil aliud proferunt quam hoc Olmedi testimonium:
“Fuit Joannes Ecclesiae Romanae gratus, verboque, scripto famosus, historias majorum temporum etiam
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Lateran Council (1512-1517). We recall that the Fifth Lateran Council voted to reaffirm
Boniface VIII’s extreme papalist bull ‘Unam Sanctam’, which Leo X then reiterated in 1516
in the bull ‘Pastor æternus’. As head theologian at the Vatican, Rafanelli was certainly involved in preparing these moves, which implies that like the Pope and the General Council
he too was papalist. It follows that if he were assigned the task of drawing up the program
of the Sistine ceiling, the program he would have produced would have been precisely the
papalist broadside proclaimed with such fanfare on the ceiling.
As for his being a Dominican preacher, the Dominican Order is officially the Order
of Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum), and in particular the Dominicans were charged with
preaching to and converting the Indians. Now Rafanelli, besides overseeing other people’s
sermons in the Sistine Chapel, preached in it himself. It may be no accident then that the
most prominent figure on the ceiling—Jonah—is a symbol of Christ preaching to the
world. It could be that one of the reasons Jonah is so prominent on the ceiling was a desire
on the part of a clever Dominican theologian and preacher to slip in a sly reference to his
own order and capacities. The first medallion’s use of Elijah rising to heaven to figure the
Ascension might have been suggested to Rafanelli by the parallel representation of the two
episodes on the doors of the mother church of the Dominican Order, Santa Sabina.
It is possible that Rafanelli drew up the program of the ceiling under precise instructions from Julius II. According to Guicciardini, Julius II was not an intellectual, and
many would argue that he was not knowledgeable enough to be capable of drawing up the
program. His ignorance has however been overstated. Julius II had three private libraries,
which he used,1 and he had studied canon law in his youth and so was aware of the legal
foundations of the papalist case.
A favorite nephew of Sixtus IV, the future Julius II was one of the most important
members of the papal court when the wall frescoes were painted in the early 1480’s. Sixtus
ethnicas in promptu habens”.’ See J. Quetif and J. Echard: ‘Scriptores Ordonis Praedicatorum’, Paris 1721,
vol. 2, p. 31.
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IV was a professional theologian, and it was likely at his instigation, and certainly with his
knowledge and approbation, that the wall frescoes expressed papal primacy. The future
Julius II is known to have been interested in the chapel decoration, and he must have
known what the theme of the wall frescoes was: it was no secret. Julius II was greatly attached to his uncle’s memory—he erected Sixtus IV’s magnificent tomb in St. Peter’s.
When he continued and completed the murals of his uncle’s chapel (as its name indicates,
the Sistine Chapel is the chapel of Sixtus IV), he naturally continued and completed his
uncle’s politico-theological program. No doubt he had neither the time nor the inclination
to go into details with Michelangelo. That he left to Rafanelli.
Julius II died in 1513 and Rafanelli in 1515. Michelangelo could now say whatever
he liked about the composition of the ceiling with no danger of being contradicted. And
indeed Michelangelo claimed he was given a free hand on the ceiling only in 1523, when
both Rafanelli and Julius II were safely dead and in their graves.
Conclusion
So finally the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel turns out to be interested mainly in trying to establish that the Pope is the fount of all political as well as all religious authority on
earth. This result may seem a bit disappointing, and there is no question but that we
would have preferred the message to be more imaginative, more profound, and more universal. But that the ceiling of an official chapel of the Pope should be dedicated to glorifying and exalting the Papacy does not seem to me to be an earth-shaking surprise. What is
surprising rather is that the papalist message was not noticed earlier.
My explanation for this oddest of all the oddities of the chapel is that we are blinded by the overwhelming force of Michelangelo’s forms on the one hand and by our precon-
1
See I. Cloulas, ‘Jules II’, Paris 1990, p. 165 and L. Dorez, ‘La Bibliothèque privée de Jules II’, in La Revue
des Bibliothèques VI (1896).
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ceptions concerning the Renaissance on the other. The forms are so powerful that we cannot imagine that the iconography is stale papalist propaganda. Such original and deeply
stirring art must surely have a correspondingly modern and correspondingly profound
message.
Hence the desperate efforts to find a philosophically up-to-date Neoplatonic content in the frescoes. We have seen however that this central artistic achievement of the
Renaissance was not Neoplatonist in intent. While our result does not by itself disprove
the theory that Neoplatonism was all-pervasive in the Renaissance, it does eliminate one
of the central pieces of evidence produced in support of that thesis.
Another popular idea is that the ceiling contains a hidden religious message, which
is assumed to be either mundanely Christological or else high-minded and due to a respected theologian or possibly expressive of Michelangelo’s own views. That the decoration of this high place of Christianity should be more political than spiritual in nature and
that a court hack could have made up the program for the purpose of transmitting reactionary papalist propaganda seems unworthy, and is, to us, unthinkable.
A medieval papalist message is also incompatible with our preconceptions concerning the Renaissance. The Renaissance, as its name implies, is supposed to be fundamentally different from the Middle Ages. But both the program and the underlying message of the Sistine ceiling could easily have been identical if the frescoes had been painted
in the fourteenth century instead of the sixteenth. The greatest monument of the Renaissance, far from demonstrating that the Renaissance outlook was non-, if not anti-, medieval, turns out to prove exactly the opposite: it shows that the Renaissance had both feet
ensconced deep in the Gothic past.
So deep, in fact, that the usefulness of the term ‘Renaissance’ as defining a distinct
historical period rather than an artistic and literary phenomenon begins to seem doubtful.
There is no question that the artistic style of the early sixteenth century is very different
from that of the fourteenth century. But does this imply that the cultural and mental am-
184
bience had changed equally drastically in all other respects?
Our presuppositions concerning the Renaissance repose on the historical theories
of Hegel and Burckhardt. We assume that every age has a coherent, distinctive and allembracing character that is reflected in its art, and that the outer style of a work of art
therefore corresponds to the nature of its inner contents. Since the artistic style of the ceiling is clearly non-medieval, we conclude that the message it intends to transmit must be
also. This article shows that as regards the Sistine ceiling this conclusion is incorrect. Here
there is a radical split between contents and style.
Style was divorced from content also in other domains. In his work on religious
sermons in the Renaissance John O’Malley has shown that while the rhetorical style was
new, the message transmitted was the same as in the Middle Ages.1
So revolutionary form does not imply revolutionary content, and a reactionary content does not imply a reactionary form. The question then arises, is the style or the content
more indicative of the period? To say cleverly that the style is the content is to beg the
question, that is, to assume what one is trying to prove.
Since a new style does not necessarily imply a changed ideological outlook, it follows that style is independent of ideology. The ideological outlook is what determines the
spirit of the age, and the spirit of the age is what defines historical periods. We have seen
that the underlying ideology of the emblematic artistic achievement of the High Renaissance, the Sistine ceiling, was purely medieval. In this crucial instance the Renaissance
turns out to consider as central the same issues that were considered central in the Middle
Ages, using the same arguments to prove the same points. These issues and these proofs,
unlike more basic elements of Catholic doctrine, were specifically medieval, since they
were shelved at the Reformation. A mindset that considers as central the same questions
that the medieval mindset considered central and accepts the same proofs as conclusive
1
‘There is no escaping the fact the Renaissance rhetoric was fundamentally conservative in intent.’ J.
O’Malley, ‘Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome’, Durham, N.C. 1979, p. 242.
185
cannot be said to be fundamentally different from it. It follows that the Renaissance did
not quite constitute a separate and distinct age, and that a new age set in only at the
Reformation. That in current usage the term ‘Renaissance’ signifies a historical period and
not merely an artistic phenomenon only goes to show that at present our perception of
history rests more on esthetic criteria than ideological analyses.
This is not to say that the social structure had not evolved over the centuries. The
status of the artist had clearly changed. That an artist should be entrusted with establishing not only the form but also the contents of the ceiling of a papal chapel now seemed
perfectly credible. Indeed Michelangelo would not have claimed he was given a free hand
on the ceiling unless he expected to be believed, which in fact he was. Why did he lie? Perhaps because telling the truth would have been too humiliating, the reasoning being that
while lesser artists may be obliged to follow programs imposed from above, someone of
Michelangelo’s stature would surely be given a free hand. For Michelangelo’s stature was,
in his own estimation as well as in that of others, unique.
Why did the papalist project fail?
As we said, that the aim of the ceiling frescoes was to glorify the Pope and assert
papal primacy is a new theory, never proposed before. It follows that for the past five hundred years the theme of the program has not been understood or even noticed.
Was Michelangelo himself aware of it? Certainly not in detail, and perhaps not
even in general. Condivi misidentified the subject of the seventh scene as the Sacrifice of
Abel, ‘correcting’ Vasari’s perfectly accurate description of it as the Sacrifice of Noah, and
Condivi drew his information from Michelangelo. It seems most unlikely that Michelangelo would have rejected Vasari’s correct identification of the scene and replaced it with an
erroneous one, even considering that more than forty years had elapsed (Condivi’s Life of
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Michelangelo appeared in 1555), if he had been aware of what the function of the scene in
the ceiling program was; that is, if he both knew what the theme of the decoration was and
had understood the precise manner in which the theme determined the program.1
So if the ceiling was intended to further the cause of papalism, it has failed dismally. How can this be? Were the Pope and his advisers so incompetent as not to know how to
put a message across?
The answer seems to be that the decoration was just that, decoration, and not vulgar advertising. It had a subtext because such was the custom, and the decoration was papalist because that seemed appropriate in this particular case. In the Sistine Chapel, decorum ordained that the iconography should be a proclamation of papal primacy.
Which is not to say that contents of the decoration were taken lightly. A normal
church would have had illustrations of lives of saints and in particular of the lives of the
patron saints of its founders and promoters, and a church dedicated to the Assumption
would ordinarily contain a life of the Virgin. In the Sistine Chapel there are no lives of
saints, and though it is dedicated to the Assumption, there is no life of the Virgin. Clearly
here the program had different ends in mind than those pursued elsewhere. It follows that
the Sistine Chapel is not an ordinary church.
And indeed the Sistine Chapel is not an ordinary church but a chapel attended by
the highest-ranking churchmen and where conclaves for the election of new Popes were
held. Here the Pope is not pleading in the court of public opinion but before the far narrower one of clerics with an intimate knowledge of papalist arguments and pretensions. At
least as much as it is didactic or homiletic, Christian art is declaratory in purpose, to assert
publicly the faith. The chapel decoration was intended as an assertion of right, and the aim
was to put on record visually the claims of papalism. The papalist content of the frescoes
would have been evident to the high-ranking churchmen assembled in the chapel, to
1
There is of course the possibility that he did know what was going on but misidentified the seventh scene in
a deliberate attempt to confuse matters.
187
whom it was intended to serve as a timely reminder, had they but taken the trouble to examine them closely.
Which no doubt few did in the short remaining time before the onset of the Reformation. With the Reformation extreme papalism became moot. At the same time the prestige of Michelangelo rose to dizzying heights, and from being the ceiling of the Pope the
Sistine ceiling became the ceiling of Michelangelo. And so the papalist message ceased to
be legible.
It may be objected that if the intention was to transmit an inhabitual message there
would be explicit inscriptions stating this fact. This however was not thought necessary in
view of the intended audience. One can infer the attitude of the chapel vis-à-vis inscriptions and what they should and should not contain from the wall frescoes. These did have
inscriptions over them—the ‘tituli’, but while we know since Ettlinger that the message of
the wall frescos was papal primacy, the tituli do not assert papal primacy openly, and only
people well versed in papalist theory, like the churchmen using the chapel, would have
realized that they are related to a papalist argument, that of the divine law.
Indeed even after Ettlinger’s discovery no commentator has remarked before now
that the tituli are related to papal primacy. The one text on the walls that comes close to
suggesting papal primacy directly, ‘Nemo sibi assumat honorem nisi vocatus a deo
tanquam Aron’ in the fifth scene on the left wall, was sufficiently vague that before Ettlinger its papalist implications were not noticed. And this, in spite of the fact that, unlike
the tituli, which had been painted over, this text was perfectly visible throughout the centuries. Only one, then, of the numerous inscriptions on the walls even hints at papalism;
nevertheless all agree at present that the message of the wall frescos is papal primacy. That
Sixtus IV did not state his papalist message more clearly shows that he thought this was
unnecessary. It was unnecessary because the intended audience would understand his
point without prompting. For the intended audience was not the public at large but at a
small group of theologically trained churchmen, well aware of the details of papalist theo-
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ry. In the same way, to have inscriptions proclaiming openly papal primacy on the ceiling
was considered superfluous.
Moreover inscriptions would have taken up much valuable space, given the manyfacetedness of the argument and that to be legible from the floor the letters would have
had to be quite large given the great height of the ceiling. The ceiling therefore, unlike the
walls, has no sustained lettering of any kind. The exclusion of inscriptions longer than
names is rigid and absolute: even the sibyls, who elsewhere are always (so far as I know)
accompanied by texts, and whose placing on the Sistine ceiling itself depended on such
texts,1 nevertheless have no texts accompanying them on the ceiling.
After the ceiling
Shortly after the Sistine ceiling was finished, Raphael’s tapestries were added to the
walls. At that point, the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, carried out over a span of more
than thirty years, was complete and had a single overriding theme, the authority of the
Popes. The Popes themselves were painted on the walls between the windows. The stories
of Peter and Paul, the founders of the papacy, were depicted on tapestries on the bottom
level. Above these were the lives of Moses and Jesus, whose lawmaking powers were
transmitted to the Popes. On the ceiling the central area displayed the first predecessors of
the Popes as supreme legislators and rulers. Around the central area the prophets and sibyls systematically underlined their papalist implications. Further down the ancestors of
Christ informed us that we should obey the Pope and the Church.
Pride goeth before a fall. The height of papal pretensions was in short order succeeded by the Reformation, which shook a diminished papacy to its core. Papal threats of
1
See above in the section consecrated to the sibyls (p. 137).
.
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punishment receded to the end of time, and the altar wall was repainted to depict the Last
Judgment.
The Last Judgment includes the resurrection of the dead, and so harmonizes both
with the Assumption it replaced on the altar wall and with the prophet Jonah immediately
above it, but as regards the dialectic of the papalist argument the Last Judgment constitutes a rupture. By postponing punishment to the end of time the Last Judgment concedes
Marsilius’s point that the Pope has no coercive powers in the here and now. The tight
scholastic reasoning that is the driving force of the rest of the decoration has been abandoned. By the time the Last Judgment was painted, the Renaissance had progressed, the
Reformation had taken place, papalism was taken less seriously, and Michelangelo’s prestige had become such that it was no longer possible to dictate details to him, though even
now the theme of the fresco seems to have been the Pope’s idea and not his. Since Michelangelo was probably ignorant of and surely not interested in the precise theological underpinnings of papalism, the Last Judgment does not continue the rigorous exposition of
papalist theology found on the ceiling.
Since the papalist message of the decoration scheme was no longer pertinent, and
perhaps even forgotten, preserving the scheme’s integrity did not seem important, and all
the frescos on the altar wall were erased to make room for the Last Judgment. The first
Popes disappeared, the first scene in the life of Moses, the first scene in the life of Christ,
the first two lunettes, and also Perugino’s Assumption of the Virgin. By eliminating essential parts of it the Last Judgment destroyed the conceptual coherence of the decoration. It
also damaged irreparably its esthetic unity, and the alteration of the ideological message
was accompanied by an artistic dissonance. No effort was made to set the Last Judgment
smoothly within the existing frescos, and the abrupt joins grate disagreeably. The visual
break between the Last Judgment and the rest of the Chapel decoration corresponds to
and reflects the ideological rupture in the implied subtext, and, indeed, in the course of
European history.
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