Mystic Ark

Mystic Ark April 24, 2015

Conrad Rudolph’s The Mystic Ark is the product of impressive scholarship. Its focus is on the image of the mystic ark, a complex cosmic portrait showing “the Majesty” (looking like Jesus) enthroned, flanked by angels, holding a large disk, inscribed with a square turned sideways like a diamond. Inside the square is a diagram of Noah’s ark seen from above. Within the ark diagram the artist has depicted the six days of creation, a map of the world, the ages of human history leading to the eschaton, and, well, lots more. The image contains everything, and then some. Everything (object, color, shape, posture, sequence) means something; indeed, every item on the image means many, many things.

A partial quotation of Rudolph’s opening description captures the complexity of the piece: “The Ark is fixed in a  traditional macrocosm/microcosm consisting of the three zones of earth, air, and ether. . . . The earth, with which the Ark is coterminous, is given as a world map in the form of an ellipsoid (vesica piscis) with ‘regions, mountains, rivers, cities, and towns’ . . . Its basic color is specified as green, and it is oriented with the east at the top. The air contains a quaternary harmony with the ages of a human being, the four elements, the seasons, the cardinal directions, and the four qualities, all surrounded by the twelve winds. . . . And the ether includes the Twelve Months and the Signs of the Zodiac, with the circumference marked off into 360 degrees. A Majesty embraces this cosmos, sitting enthroned and holding a scroll in his right hand and a scepter in his left. With the scroll, he welcomes the saved while, with the scepter, he condemns the damned, both of these objects being directed toward specific parts of the world. On either side of the Majesty stand two seraphim with wings in a complex, symbolic arrangement. On either side of his head, the nine choirs of angels are arranged in a radically smaller scale, gazing into his face” (3). 

Rudolph believes this image actually existed, was planned or made by Hugh of St. Victor. But the actual image had to be reconstructed (available here) from the Ark Lectures that Hugh delivered 1125-1130.

Rudolph’s book chases down every dimension of the image: Iconographical and textual commentary on the ark of Noah; the imagery of the church as the ark of salvation; the mystical dimension of the ark as an “Ark of Wisdom”; the ark as an image of the stages of ascent to God. In an appendix, he provides a translation of Hugh’s lectures with detailed commentary. He places the ark lectures in their original twelfth-century context, and sees in the lectures and the image a polemic against the rationalizing trajectory of theology represented by Peter Abelard. Hugh’s lectures represent a “middle-ground worldview,” between the misplaced attention given to creation,s secular learning, and reason that was becoming popular but also rejecting the rejection of secular learning and reason that had been part of the “old theology” (358-9).

With this beautifully produced volume, Rudolph has not only provided the most detailed analysis of Hugh’s lectures and the image we are likely to get, but provides an exemplum of the medieval world-picture that will be difficult to surpass. Rudolph teaches us to read the ark. And, if we learn to read the ark, we’ll be learning to be medieval.


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