From Rubble to Renewal

Peter's exhortation to come to Christ, a ‘living stone’ (lithon zōnta) and build a ‘spiritual house’ (oikos pneumatikos) must be understood within the context of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. He reminds the faithful that, more than the physical building, it is the people themselves who constitute the true edifice, which is a spiritual one. In the aftermath of devastation and displacement, the life of the church can be rebuilt: not from the rubble that remains, but from these ‘living stones’.

After the fall of the Holy Land in the twelfth century, Christians experienced a similar displacement and exclusion from the place at the origin of their religious history. Centres of pilgrimage throughout Western Christendom sought to replicate the sacred experience of this inaccessible destination, at times recreating entire landscapes of devotion. On a smaller scale, the Palestine box enables a form of topographical travel for the devotional beholder to the Holy Land. Vivid pictures animate the imagination to ‘see’ Christ as the perpetually living sacrifice. Stone, charged with the holiness of what it has touched, acts as a conduit to bring the faithful into contact with the land which witnessed these events. By means of substitution, ordinary materials become extraordinary, alive with spiritual potency.

For many centuries, mosaics have been employed in the decoration of Christian churches, in particular, the surfaces of their lofty, domed apses: spaces that symbolized, and visualized, the eternal realm of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The specific materiality of mosaics—their uniquely reflective capacity, glowing when illuminated, as if divinely lit from within, gem-like in their rich glittering colours—made them especially suited to the depiction of the sacred.

The ongoing restoration of the Chora church provides a compelling metaphor for Peter's idea of a church made of ‘living stones’. First, it highlights the need for the faithful to continuously build their spiritual house, through sacrifice and pious deeds. But the unique method by which mosaic is restored also provides a potentially rich hermeneutical device for understanding this idea. For, with the insertion of new tesserae, even the most damaged mosaics may be renewed, restored to their original radiance and potential to reflect Christ’s glory.

The final part of 1 Peter 2:1–10 reminds its readers that the stone which founds the Church can also prove a stumbling block, to those who fail to follow God's word. Throughout Scripture (e.g. Luke 19:40; Leviticus 26:1), and in the subsequent history of Christian art, stone manifests this duality: as a medium with the potential for religious expression, but also for idolatry. The biblical injunction against the graven image became the foundation for the rejection of Christian sculpture in the Eastern Church, and later within a Reformed one.

Within this frame, Michelangelo’s choice to ‘break’ the beautiful body of Christ takes on another meaning. In his monumental image of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, the artist was praised for showing the beauty and perfection of the human body in every imaginable form. But he was also castigated for this display of artistic virtuosity; condemned for placing his own art above the Christian beliefs he sought to animate. Towards the end of his career, Michelangelo's sonnets reflect upon the spiritual perils of the imagination, or fantasia—the source of artistic inspiration, but also of error and sin.

Perhaps, then, we might see in the non-triumphant Rondanini Pietà not a tragic ending, but a spiritual turning: from the idolatry of the celebrated artwork carved in stone, to its animation by pious reflection. In this final meditation on the mystery of the Passion, in its inward-turning iconoclasm, an idol of art is transformed into a living icon.