Pentecost

The Pentecost dome mosaic’s golden surface, in the eleventh-century monastery church of Hosios Loukas in Phokis, crowns the actual liturgical space before the apse, in front of the altar. Peter and Paul face each other at the east, across a gap; behind them the Apostles sit in a circling row, speaking to one another in pairs. The axial division, aligned with the Virgin in the apse holding the divine Child, draws attention to her. This architectural arrangement of the imagery unites the sacramental and human aspects of the salvation that the Pentecost miracle enabled the Apostles to preach (Acts 2:14ff).

Above each Apostle’s halo a ray containing a flame descends from a representation of the Trinity in heaven’s blue disk at the centre of the dome. The dove of the Spirit, facing Mary, perches over the Word, in the form of a golden book, on the throne of the Father. The individual red tongues, like candle flames, hover upright as if sliding down the tapered rays.

Although the Apostles are un-named, and without distinguishing attributes apart from the bound volumes or scrolls representing the Word they would spread, their depictions follow portrait types already established in Byzantium.

Paul’s presence expands the subject here to the authoritative teaching of the faith, beyond a historical event isolated in time; he was not yet a follower of Christ at the time of the Pentecostal gathering described in Acts 3. Yet he would become paired with Peter as an apostolic leader; Paul’s letters to widespread Christian communities explain the need for them to join in proclaiming the faith as God’s word speaking through his people.

There is also a reminder, in the centring of the throne between Peter and Paul, of the orthodoxy established by the Ecumenical Councils. In Byzantine depictions the council delegates sit on either side of the Patriarchal throne in a curved group, just like the Apostles seated at Pentecost.

A relief panel in the Spanish monastery cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos: the Pentecost clouds on a stone pier visually connect heaven with earth. A corner column separates the reliefs of the Ascension and Pentecost.

In walking to the cloister from the refectory, the walk at this corner turns east, toward the doors to the library/scriptorium; the chapter house; and the south transept of the church. Passing the Pentecost relief one might notice the attentive Apostles standing with their books and scrolls, Peter holding his keys, and Mary receptive as the Church itself.

In both scenes the figures are in two closely-packed rows as they experience the divine presence under curtains of rippling cloud. The cloud-veil pulled heavenward by angels at the Ascension carries Jesus up, concealing his body, while in the Pentecost scene descending cloud layers part to reveal the earthward-pointing hand of God above the Apostles’ heads, honoured by angels. The sculptural relief, without tongues of fire, borrows the cloud from Revelation (Revelation 1:7; cf. Matthew 24:30; Daniel 7:13) and from the Old Testament’s repeated mentions of the cloud-borne glory of God (e.g. Exodus 24:16; 40:34; 2 Chronicles 5:14; 1 Kings 8:11; Ezekiel 10:4).

The framing arch-shapes of the narrative reliefs articulate in space the monastery’s spiritual embrace of salvation offered through the risen Lord and the Holy Spirit. In each scene, the feet of a participating pair of angels remain invisible in heaven, as medieval Byzantine artists routinely portray them. The angels’ gestures define the moment of God’s Spirit descending. The Apostles receiving it—instead of tilting their heads up, as at the Ascension—appear to be listening to the rushing-wind sound described in the biblical account (Acts 2:2). But the Virgin Mary, standing at the back over a central division between the group’s two halves, looks directly up and raises both hands in acknowledgement.

Her centrality, and the Apostles’ standing pose, also acknowledge traditions from the early centuries of the Church, since the Holy Spirit, coming to her in Christ’s conception, as later to the Church whom she symbolizes, had enabled salvation; and because after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, standing, instead of kneeling, during prayer marked the sanctity of the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.

The Acts of the Apostles and the book of Revelation combine in this full-page painted depiction of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984, is known to have requested, and believed to have personally supervised, the making of the richly illustrated Benedictional, or book of blessings, which includes this image. The Apostles are seated in an ambiguous space, half heavenly vision and half earthly enclosure. As if already attending God in heaven like the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse (Revelation 4:4), they sit supported by four bands of colour, like a rainbow, in an axially divided group; but their feet rest on a firmer ground line, indicating an apse-like space framed by an arch. A canopy of flames descends toward their heads from the beak of a great diving dove, inside the arch, while angels, dipping downwards with veiled hands, confirm the coming to earth of heavenly power.

A wind-rippled canopy of red and yellow divine light (see Acts 2:2), slightly parted in the middle, shapes the long tongues of fire over the Apostles’ heads (v.3). The pointed tips seem to touch the rims of their golden haloes, while the outermost tongues meet the columns of the framing arch. It is as if Aethelwold and his illuminator (the scribe Godeman, who is believed to have later become abbot of Thorney in Lincolnshire) were hinting at sacred architecture, inspired by illustrations in imported manuscripts, and transposing the motif of parted sanctuary curtains and the actuality of shimmering overhead recesses into the empowering flames.

Aethelwold had previously enshrined his own leadership, as abbot of Abingdon, by giving the monastery a dazzling new church with a curved sanctuary, after bringing it into line with continental Benedictine reforms. As a bishop, he drew his authority from Peter, who holds heaven’s keys in this Pentecost scene, and who alone of all the Apostles in this manuscript wears a monastic tonsure.