Another look at the disappearing Christ: corporeal and spiritual vision in early medieval images

The answer Iies directly in scripture, which most scholars have failed to recognize because they have seen the problem from a late medieval perspective, that is, in terms of the putative optical "realism" of the images. The detailed account of the Ascension in Acts 1.9-10 repeatedly stresses the disciples' visual apprehension of the event: "while they looked on, he was raised up: and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they were beholding him going up to heaven, behold two men stood by them . . . and said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?" (emphasis added). Only George Henderson has recognized that the new Ascension type quite literally illustrates this New Testament description of Christ vanishing from the Apostles' sight into cloud.(109) He thus suggested that the disappearing Christ's visual "realism" was the simple result of a characteristic Anglo-Saxon penchant for literal word illustration.

There can be no doubt that this was a factor in the iconography's creation. After all, we have already discovered that the iconography was influenced by the Utrecht Psalter, 'a manuscript that provides countless examples of literal word illustration. Included in the psalter's Creed drawing, however, is a comparatively conventional scene of the Ascension that shows the full figure of Christ lifted into cloud. The disappearing Christ can be regarded on one level as a critique of this pictorialization of the event: the Anglo-Saxons sought to outdo the Utrecht Psalter's illuminators by an even more rigorous application of their technique of literal word illustration.(110) It is quite another matter, however, to accept that the Anglo-Saxon sensitivity to the literal meaning of the narrative text is sufficient to explain the optical illusionism of the imagery. The deep theological meaning of other aspects of the iconography cautions against such a simple explanation. In the Middle Ages, the acceptance of the literal meaning of the biblical text did not exclude other levels of meaning,(111) and the willingness to embrace multiple readings also holds true for the literal illustration of scripture. A fuller explanation of the new Ascension type Iies in the deep significance that patristic and early medieval commentators attached to the phrase "out of their sight" in the account of Christ's disappearance.

In many of his writings, Augustine stressed that Christ had to vanish from sight so that the Apostles could perceive him as God. Before the Ascension, the disciples had known Christ only in the human flesh that had clothed his divinity. As long as their "eyes of flesh" had been fixed only on his familiar incarnate humanity, they were unable to see his divinity.

It was necessary that the form of the slave [i.e., his human form; cf. Phil. 2:7] should be taken away from their sight, for gazing upon it they thought that Christ was only that which they saw. . . . But his Ascension to the Father meant that he should be looked upon as he is, the equal to the Father, so that there at last they should see the vision which suffices for us.(112)