The Corporeality of Clothing in Medieval Literature by Sarah Brazil

Author:Sarah Brazil [Brazil, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Medieval
ISBN: 9781580443586
Google: OFisDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2018-12-17T22:20:25+00:00

Chapter 3

Coming Forth, Still Bound

Raising Lazarus in Theology and Performance

IN THE “RESURRECTION OF Lazarus” scene from the Scrovegni chapel, Padua (ca. 1303–1305), Giotto di Bondone notably departs from the prevailing iconographic trends of his contemporaries.1 In this image (figure 6), the newly raised man stands outside his tomb, bound from neck to toe in tightly wrapped graveclothes. The bindings painted onto the body prompt certain questions. How does Lazarus stand up in this tomb when all his joints are tightly wrapped in cloth? And how does he walk out of that tomb, still in those wrappings?2 These questions are surely pertinent, but Giotto adds one more detail that potentially frustrates the viewer further. This Lazarus looks distinctly dead. His skin, contrasting with all other faces in the scene, is conspicuously lacking in color. His eyes are closed, and his mouth hangs open. St. Peter’s left hand rests on his shoulder and offers the newly raised man stability while his right hand unties the wrappings.3 Unlike many contemporary scenes, Christ does not make eye contact with Lazarus. His gaze is, however, met by Peter, whose head is turned away from the man he is unwrapping. This scene shows the promise of resurrection, but it is yet to happen.

Art historian Ruth Wilkins Sullivan identifies Giotto’s distinctiveness in this image as being one of timing.4 As the critic clarifies, the artist chooses to explore the process of transition from death back to life, one that is mostly complete in iconographic counterparts. Although the image is striking to a modern eye and is full of details not easily reconciled, a contemporary viewer may have had recourse to interpretative strategies that aided her understanding of this scene. Around the same time, in Giotto’s hometown of Florence, the Dominican preacher Giordano da Pisa delivered a sermon in which the “unbinding of Lazarus’s burial shroud signifies liberation from evil pleasures of the world.”5 The unbinding of cloths is key to understanding the exegetical conventions in which Giotto participates. To “unbind” had a pertinent meaning in medieval Christian theology, stemming from Christ’s words to Peter in Matthew 16:19: “Et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum. Et quodcumque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in caelis: et quodcumque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in caelis” (And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven).

Through these verses, church fathers understood that Christ’s words conferred on Peter—and thus the papacy—the power to forgive a sinner or to excommunicate them, and that the decision made on earth would extend to heaven. Notably, the Latin verb ligare (to bind) was one and the same with the verb used in John 11:44 in relation to Lazarus’s wrappings. And the counterpart, solvare (to loose), appears in the imperative form when Christ orders his disciples to remove the ties that bind Lazarus. Although this

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