The Healing of the Paralysed Man

Situated high on the north wall of the nave of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, this mosaic is one of thirteen panels in a sequence depicting Jesus’s public ministry.

Throughout these panels the mosaicist(s) has focused on the principal actors in each Gospel episode. So—notably—there is no crowd in this design, although a gathering is mentioned in all three versions of the narrative.

The absence of the crowd here was probably at least in part a practical decision. The panels are high up and relatively small. Viewed from the floor of the nave, the subject of this design can be readily recognized. The panel would be more difficult to read if it included lots of smaller figures.

The focus on the main people in the story could also have an exegetical function: to direct the viewer to the central event—the miracle of healing by Jesus.

A millennium and a half after the creation of the Sant’Apollinare mosaics, the English artist Eric Gill employed a similar economy of figures in his Stations of the Cross for London’s Westminster Cathedral. Writing pseudonymously, Gill explained that he had omitted the crowd from his designs so that the worshippers could enter into that role (Rowton: 1918).

The absence of attendant figures in the Sant’Apollinare mosaics—including the missing crowd in the miracle at Capernaum—could be viewed in a similar way. The worshipper—or the tourist—in Sant’Apollinare Nouvo can inhabit the roles of those in the narratives who are not depicted. Contemplating this episode, they might ‘become’ the crowd.

Visitors to Sant’Apollinare Nouvo might of course find themselves quite literally in a crowd—in the congregation at the liturgy, or in a throng of tourists. In gathering there for a communal experience, they recall the people assembling to listen to Jesus in Capernaum. That crowd gathered to hear Jesus preaching, but also hindered access to him for a vulnerable person.

Viewing this episode in situ, we might also experience something of the paralysed man’s perspective: from the distant floor of the nave, this Jesus seems relatively inaccessible. But in a congregation gathered in his name, he assures his followers that he is present (Matthew 18:20).

Inhabiting these different roles in the narrative, we might ask ourselves whether we are conscious of who is included and excluded from our congregations, and how the healing activity of Jesus might be present now.

References

Rowton, E. 1918 ‘The Stations of the Cross in the Cathedral’, Westminster Cathedral Chronicle, 12: 50–53

Willem Isaacsz. van Swanenburg presents us with a mass of bodies. The crowd fills almost all of the image and spills out of the open door to the right.

Amid this hubbub, a man on a bed is being lowered through the ceiling by four other men.

The scene is chaotic and claustrophobic.

Van Swanenburg has depicted the event just as it is described in Mark and Luke. But the Gospel writers do not tell us how the crowd gathered around Jesus reacted to the man appearing through the roof. Van Swanenburg imagines a range of responses among the assembly.

Several of the faces are astonished at the sight. Others look anxious at the precarious manoeuvre—will he make it down safely? Some reach up to help. A few appear to be disgruntled—perhaps they are annoyed that the man is ‘pushing in’ to get past them to Jesus.

Jesus’s own expression is a mixture of surprise and concern. He leans backwards as the man is lowered towards him, and his arms are open at his sides. This gesture suggests both astonishment and a readiness to receive the man who is being lowered to him.

But Jesus’s arms are not just open to the man on the bed. His gesture is directed out of the frame and so appears to invite us as viewers into the scene. If we are part of this gathering, we might reflect on whether we recognize ourselves in any of the reactions of the crowd to this event.

Stanley Spencer had worked as a hospital orderly in Macedonia during the First World War and must have encountered soldiers paralysed in conflict. The paralysed man in this biblical narrative may therefore have put him in mind of his wartime experiences.

But Spencer sets the scene neither in Macedonia, nor in the biblical Capernaum, but in his home village of Cookham in Berkshire, England, which was the setting for many of the artist’s biblical paintings.

The house is that of Spencer’s next-door neighbours, and the ladders belong to a local builder (Christie’s: 1999). These real-life, local details embody the event in the artist’s own time and place. The Gospel narrative is not just something that happened in first-century Capernaum. It is a miracle that is relived in day-to-day village life.

As Mark describes, a crowd is spilling out of the house where Jesus is preaching (2:2). Jesus himself is not seen in this image because we are viewing the event from outside.

Closely following the narrative in Mark and Luke, Spencer depicts the paralysed man being lowered through a gap in the roof of the house.

Among the onlookers in this scene, some figures on the left are bending backwards to watch the precarious manoeuvre, and to the right, another figure views it from a tree. They are witnessing a feat of human ingenuity in the hoisting of the man through the roof, but a greater cause for amazement is about to occur inside.

This image is therefore one of anticipation and hope for the miraculous in this time and place.

References

Christie’s. 1999. ‘Lot Essay: Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A. (1891-1959), The Paralytic Being Let into the Top of the House on his Bed’, https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-1472090 [accessed 21 December 2020]