The original recipients of Ephesians would probably have imagined a Roman soldier’s accoutrements when they heard the list of elements making up the ‘whole armour of God’ (deSilva 2022: 325). However, Christians in sixteenth-century Nuremberg would more likely have visualized the ‘shield of faith’ and ‘helmet of salvation’ in a heraldic format, like the fictitious coat of arms represented here in an engraving by Albrecht Dürer.

The combination of a rampant lion and crowing rooster does not identify an actual heraldic bearer; instead, this is a coat of arms for the ‘everyman’. Like the author of Ephesians, Dürer has conjured an imaginary armour that can unite communities across earthly borders under one rhetorical flourish. As a form of image that can be reproduced, prints like Dürer’s engraving needed to speak to broad audiences across geographical and cultural divides.

Similarly, Ephesians was written to instruct and encourage a wide range of people, perhaps as a circular letter. Potent metaphors such as the ‘armour of God’ are successful precisely because they are universally adaptable, speaking to individuals and communities across time and space.

As a picture, Dürer’s open-ended heraldry invites viewers to gloss the arms with their own allegorical interpretations. Perhaps the lion symbolizes Christ. The silent cockcrow on the helm could recall heraldic representations of the Arma Christi popular in Dürer’s day, reminding viewers of Peter’s denial of Christ (Hughes 2023: 505). The rooster calls us to be mindfully attentive to possible hidden messages in the composition, just as recipients of this text are urged to ‘keep alert with all perseverance’ (Ephesians 6:18) and—elsewhere in the New Testament canon—‘not [to] sleep, as others do, but [to] keep awake ... and put on the breastplate of faith and love’ (1 Thessalonians 5:6–8).

Dürer’s engraving and the New Testament’s epistles sharpen and fortify their recipients’ intellectual and spiritual strength through allegorical contemplation of imaginary arms, which may be adopted by anybody.

References

deSilva, David A. 2022. Ephesians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Hughes, Frances Rothwell. 2023. ‘Thinking with Heraldry on the Eve of the Reformation: A Drawing by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch’, Art History, 46.3: 484–511