Art and the Christian Apocrypha (review)

The frequently cited claim (usually credited to Gregory the Great) that art is the "textbook of the illiterate" has served the purpose of those who wished to defend some kind of positive role for art in the church. Unfortunately, the handy phrase also tends to denigrate the art, as if it were only good for children or the uneducated "lower classes." In recent years, however, the place of the visual arts has risen to new respectability as scholars (especially historians of Christianity) now pay more attention to the significance of iconography as a source of primary data as well as a form of theological expression, reflecting an aspect of religious faith and culture not accessible from written texts alone. And many of these studies, as this one does, wish to declare that visual art is not in any way subservient to text but rather exists on a plane parallel and equal to the documentary evidence of belief both expressed and transmitted to subsequent generations. The two authors of this book successfully show that images are never mere illustrations of texts but are themselves interpretive vehicles of the stories and ideas sacred to a community. Thus, visual art is not created for elementary didactic purposes but rather can be a "Bible of its own, a sacred scripture which was handed down in parallel to the written Bible, the Lives of the Saints and the liturgies" (xv).

The Bible that Cartlidge and Elliott specifically mean here is the multitude of visual images from the Christian tradition that can be associated with popular stories found in the Christian apocrypha rather than in the canonical texts of the New Testament. For instance, the volume presents and discusses examples of visual narrative cycles showing the conception, birth, childhood, and death (dormition) of Mary; the ox and the ass at the nativity of Jesus as well as the midwife, Salome; the childhood of Jesus (based on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas); and several scenes taken from the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, including representations of Paul and Thecla, and the martyrdoms of Peter, Paul, Andrew, Philip, James, and Mark. Thus, the book amply demonstrates the enduring popularity of the apocryphal legends through the many examples of their appearance in visual images through the ages. Sadly, only a small portion of the collection amassed by author David Cartlidge appears here (his index is available on the internet), and most of the examples date no later than the fourteenth century. We could wish for more, but space (and cost) undoubtedly required some paring down. The more than one hundred illustrations are well presented (in black and white), clear, and well positioned on their pages. The book is visually very pleasing.

The two authors are especially well qualified in the study of the Christian apocrypha. Elliott published his translation of the Apocryphal New Testament (based on the earlier work of M. R. James) in 1993, and Cartlidge, also a New Testament scholar, has long been interested in the apocryphal literature. Both scholars have collaborated through symposia and seminars on the subject for some years. And although the representation of the apocryphal legends in visual art is the main subject of their book, their long study of the texts plays no small part as they track certain images to particular documents or compare variants of certain cycles to different written narratives from diverse eras or geographical regions. Thus, however much the authors wish to emphasize the potential primacy of art (and the departures that art takes from textual narrative), the book seems at least to emphasize the parallels between art and text, and readers will find it hard to credit an independent source for the art apart from the texts provided along with the descriptions of the images. This is a familiar pattern for scholars originally trained in documentary methods (as this reviewer knows well from personal...