Mistaken Identity in Bavaria

Writing about St. James in Urschalling, near Prien am Chiemsee in The Wall Street Journal, H. George Fletcher comments on one of its most famous pieces of art, and the persistent error about what it depicts:

The single outstanding feature is described as a depiction of the Trinity, the triune rendition of one God in three divine persons, a depiction reportedly unique in art history, conforming to neither Eastern nor Western Christian iconography. In a diminishing triangular segment on the north side of the interior dome of the apse, between two ribs of the arches, three figures stand side by side, initially distinct and in seeming equivalence. The bodies of the figures begin to combine as they fill the long shield-shaped section that ends in a point, finally merging. The Trinity is conventionally shown as a seated God the Father, holding the crucified Christ, with the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering above. Here, there is a white-robed, white-bearded elderly man to the viewer's right, a white-robed, dark-bearded younger man to the left, and between them, a brown-robed, smooth-faced figure with long, flowing brown locks framing the face. Each is distinguished with a nimbus.

Its importance and fame notwithstanding, there is a considerable problem in identifying this depiction as the Trinity, because it is not the Trinity at all, but rather the reception of the Virgin in Paradise. Mary is welcomed and flanked by God the Father and God the Son, her own son, their respective outside arms embracing her protectively. It is entirely logical to find this above the altar, continuing the Mariology of other murals. The directly opposite southern section of the dome contains the Madonna and Child. An erroneous conclusion at an earlier date has been perpetuated, and this proof by progressive assertion, as a mentor of mine used to say, has canonized the "Trinity" painting as the most significant of the murals. It ought not to remain misidentified. It can stand on its own terms as an early and important vision of the female—indeed, of the female—in Christian iconography.

Despite its historical importance, St. James, Urschalling seems to have garnered only German-language attention and study. It greatly deserves to be far more widely known and visited.

I would like to know more about how this image has been misinterpreted and why Mr. Fletcher is so certain his view is correct. Neither interpretation seems to rest on a common iconography--he outlines the usual imagery for the Trinity, and while the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary are common images, the "reception of the Virgin in Paradise" is not an image I've seen.

Hymns and Music for the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady

This site has a great list of appropriate hymns and musical selection for today's feast, including this hymn by Father John Lingard:

Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wanderer here below,
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care,
Save us from peril and from woe.

Mother of Christ, Star of the sea
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me.

O gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid,
We sinners make our prayers through thee;
Remind thy Son that He has paid
The price of our iniquity.

Virgin most pure, Star of the sea,
Pray for the sinner, pray for me.

And while to Him Who reigns above
In Godhead one, in Persons three,
The Source of life, of grace, of love,
Homage we pay on bended knee:

Do thou, bright Queen, Star of the sea,
Pray for thy children, pray for me.

Father John Lingard (5 February 1771 – 17 July 1851), of course, was the Catholic priest who wrote the great eight-volume work The History of England that did so much to overturn the Whig view of English history. More on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the English Reformation here.

The Feast of the Assumption in England

On the Solemnity of Our Lady's Assumption, body and soul into Heaven, it seems appropriate to remember the great devotion of the English people to Mary before the Reformation.  According to some sites I've seen, England was one of the first countries to celebrate the feast, in 1060, before the Norman Conquest. The shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham symbolizes this devotion to Mary, as it was such an important pilgrimage destination. Depictions of Our Lady filled Catholic churches before the Reformation; certainly pride of place belonging to her figure on top of the Rood Screen beside her crucified Son with St. John on the other side. This imagery certainly recalled Jesus's words to her and to St. John, the Beloved Apostle: "Woman, behold your son. Behold your Mother." (And then Mary joined St. John's household.) Lady Chapels and other images of Mary as the Mother of God, and devotions to both the Joys AND Sorrows of Mary also demonstrate devotion to Our Lady,

Here is a link to an interesting academic project, tracing the changes in Marian devotion under the Tudors:

My thesis examines the changing position of the Virgin Mary during the English reformations of the sixteenth century. It explores the unsettling of established Marian tropes in order to assess the development of theological belief and its interaction with shifting patterns of piety. It also analyses the use of the Virgin as an archetype for England’s 'female kings', Mary and Elizabeth. Although she had been a central figure in medieval Christianity, the Virgin’s role in the incarnation and her place in the scheme of salvation lacked clarity, leaving space for religious speculation. Consequently, re-imagining Mary became an aspiration for Catholic evangelicals and Renaissance humanists, and one of the identifying symbols of Protestantism.

Situated at the crossroads of cultural history (representations of the Virgin) and social history (devotional practice), this research will contribute to the post-revisionist debate within Reformation studies (Wooding, 2000; Wizeman, 2006) and also engage with key writers on the sociology of religion, such as Emile Durkheim, Peter Berger and Max Weber. Consequently, it promises insights into paradigm formation, the activity of collective consciousness and the birth of confessionalism.

Although the Church of England does honor this feast on their calendar--with a nod toward the Eastern Catholic/Orthodox feast of the Dormition of Our Lady--the 2005 document on Marian dogmas and devotion agreed to by the Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) noted that:

The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption raise a special problem for those Anglicans who do not consider that the precise definitions given by these dogmas are sufficiently supported by Scripture. For many Anglicans the teaching authority of the bishop of Rome, independent of a council, is not recommended by the fact that through it these Marian doctrines were proclaimed as dogmas binding on all the faithful. Anglicans would also ask whether, in any future union between our two Churches, they would be required to subscribe to such dogmatic statements (para. 30 of Authority in the Church II (1981)).

Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ ended with these advances in ecumenical understanding and agreement on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

As a result of our study, the Commission offers the following agreements, which we believe significantly advance our consensus regarding Mary. We affirm together

 

- the teaching that God has taken the Blessed Virgin Mary in the fullness of her person into his glory as consonant with Scripture, and only to be understood in the light of Scripture (paragraph 58);

- that in view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One, Christ’s redeeming work reached ‘back’ in Mary to the depths of her being and to her earliest beginnings (paragraph 59);

- that the teaching about Mary in the two definitions of the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception, understood within the biblical pattern of the economy of hope and grace, can be said to be consonant with the teaching of the Scriptures and the ancient common traditions (paragraph 60);

- that this agreement, when accepted by our two Communions, would place the questions about authority which arise from the two definitions of 1854 and 1950 in a new ecumenical context (paragraphs 61-63);

- that Mary has a continuing ministry which serves the ministry of Christ, our unique mediator, that Mary and the saints pray for the whole Church and that the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us is not communion-dividing (paragraphs 64-75).