Aaron’s Rod

This carved relief is one of twenty-two tall rectangular panels, each possessing a similarly pleasing simplicity in their design, which form the backs of two sets of choir stalls in the Cathedral of Merseburg, in Saxony-Anhalt (part of Old Saxony). Of the artist, we know only what we can glean from his signature—prominently displayed on the stalls on the choir’s south side—that he was a Dominican friar, called Kaspar Schockholz.

The core narrative of the panels is the Life and Passion of Christ. However, each scene from this cycle is flanked on either side by an episode which predates (and in some way pre-empts) the life of Christ. The image of Aaron with his miraculous rod is located to the left of the Nativity of Christ, to the right of which appears the non-biblical episode of the Emperor Augustus’s Vision of the Virgin and Child with the Tiburtine Sibyl. For this format, Schockholz almost certainly took inspiration from a ‘biblia pauperum’, a popular type of printed book at the time, in which scenes from the Old and New Testament were grouped together to show typological frameworks.

Despite having been included within the cycle as a prophecy of the coming of Christ, in the imagery of this specific panel the artist paid close attention to Aaron’s role as high priest. He stands alone before the altar wearing the distinctive headdress of a Jewish priest, as anachronistically conceived in fifteenth-century terms. He holds his left hand against his chest in a manner which suggests that the blessing made by his other hand is directed, in part, at himself. With his blessing hand, he also signals toward the sprouting rod on the altar behind him, though his eyes remain trained on the viewer.

With this subtle economy of gaze and gesture, Schockholz gives visual form to the particular significance of the rod as symbol of the divinely-endorsed priesthood. It is an apt emphasis on the priestly vocation, given Christ’s status in Christian tradition as the true and eternal High Priest. In this respect Aaron is his forebear, as he is of all those who will share Christ’s priestly ministry.

References

Cottin, Markus, John Uwe, and Holger Kunde. 2008. Der Merseburger Dom und seine Schätze: Zeugnisse einer tausendjährigen Geschichte (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag), pp.184–86

Aaron’s rod which bloomed without roots or water, was likened to the Virgin by all four Doctors of the Western Church. Virga is the Latin word with which Jerome translated the Hebrew matteh, and the poetic effects offered by the linguistic similarities of virga and virgo were seized upon by countless other interpreters of the Scriptures through the ages.

The inscribed rectangle in the middle of the central panel of this fifteenth-century altarpiece shows the Madonna and Child enthroned surrounded by symbols of Christ and scenes and figures from the Old Testament. The preponderance of inscriptions leaves little doubt as to the painting’s didactic function, and the inscription on the lower part of the engaged frame, underwriting all the rest, proclaims its overall theme: Hanc per figuram noscas castam parituram (‘Learn of the Virgin birth through this painting’). It is clear from the many vignettes, both textual and figural, that the Virgin birth is to be understood not only as the miraculous conception of Christ, but also the perpetual virginity of Mary. Saints Jerome and Augustine, both of whom wrote treatises in defence of this doctrine, appear in the wings of the altarpiece holding scrolls which proclaim it.

Despite this focus on Mary’s purity, Christ is also foregrounded in the imagery. Four triangles surrounding the Madonna contain symbols relating to his Passion and Resurrection—the pelican who pierces her breast to feed her chicks, the lioness whose cubs awake on the third day, the phoenix who rises again, and the unicorn tamed by a virgin.

These scenes are encased within a quatrefoil of four semi-circles containing scenes from the Old Testament. Aaron appears in the upper right, kneeling before the altar, his gaze trained upon his budding rod. As with the altarpiece’s overall imagery, the depiction of Aaron proclaims the miracle of the Virgin birth while also celebrating Christ, the fruit of her miraculous fecundity.

The inscription Hec contra morem produxit virgula florem stresses the parity between the rod and the Virgin’s womb.

References

Das Rheinische Landesmuseum. 1977. Auswahlskatalog 4: Kunst und Kunsthandwerk: Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Bonn: Rheinland-Verlag), pp. 53–58

Against the customary law, a small withered rod bears fruit (Contra ius solitu[m] parit arida virgula fructum).

The miracle of Aaron’s sprouting rod appears with this inscription above it on the fourth folio of the celebrated Coronation Gospels of Vratislav II of Bohemia. It is presented together with three other Old Testament scenes (two of them on the verso, representing the closed gate of Jerusalem from Ezekiel 44:2 and the Tree of Jesse drawn from Isaiah 11). It is preceded by three folios that include portraits of the Evangelists followed by a complete genealogical tree of Jesus Christ, and immediately followed by Matthew’s Gospel with its lengthy description of Christ’s lineage from Abraham. Sandwiched between imagery and texts which are specifically concerned with Christ’s ancestry, the four Old Testament types are then clearly to be understood as Christ’s forebears.

In the lower register of folio 4r, Aaron’s rod, placed centrally among the others before the sanctuary’s altar, has miraculously bloomed, with new shoots along its length and buds sprouting at its apex. Numbers 17 specifies that Moses alone took the rods into the sanctuary and brought them out again the following day to reveal the miracle. But here the twelve heads of the Israelite tribes look on with their hands, where visible, raised in wonder. The haloed hand of God emerging from a cloud suggests that the miracle is taking place before their very eyes, though the triple-arched structure that subdivides the scene ensures that they remain outside the bounds of this hallowed space.

The conflation of the two moments—the overnight flowering of the rod and the discovery of the miracle the next morning—facilitates a parallel with the scene of Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3–4) in the register above where, again, God’s hand appears from on high. This repeated motif, along with the inscriptions, emphasizes the miraculous nature of the events and, especially, the concept of divine election.

An enthroned halo-less figure, depicted in the historiated initial on folio 68r of the manuscript, receives the same blessing from on high. He has sometimes been interpreted as King Vratislav himself, for whom this manuscript was made. Newly crowned as King of Bohemia, he is shown as an inheritor of the legacy of the divinely elected leaders of the Old Testament.

References

Hayes Williams, Jean Anne. 2000. ‘The Earliest Dated Tree of Jesse image: Thematically reconsidered’, Athanor 18: 17