Treasures in Heaven

Matthew 13:44–52

Commentaries by Jane Heath

Works of art by Fr. Serafim and Unknown artist

A Found Pearl

This fifth-century mosaic depicts the moment when, wearied from their long journey in search of ‘the king of the Jews’ (Matthew 2:2), the three Magi find the Christ child, seated on a throne, beneath the star that has guided them thus far. Their caps and clothing show that they have travelled from a great distance, giving up the security and comfort of home in order to find the king for whom they are searching.

Like the man who sold everything that he had to buy the field wherein a treasure was hidden (Matthew 13:44), or the merchant who sold everything he had in order to obtain one very precious pearl (v.45), so too the Magi have left everything behind them for the opportunity to pay homage to this newborn king. As the treasure and the pearl symbolized the ‘kingdom of the heavens’ (vv.44–45), which is made real through a relationship to its king, so too the Magi are seeking the king of the Jews, who is portrayed here regally enthroned. This is the kingdom of heaven on earth, where a human, virgin mother sits beside him in her dark, plain robes, but angels sing above him, their haloes a dimmer reflection of his own luminous halo.

As the merchant-adventurers of Jesus’s parables were overtaken by immense joy in recognizing the surpassing value of what they had found, and restructured their entire livelihood to claim its unique value for themselves, so too the Magi express their joy with their gifts. The pearls in their clothing echo the pearls that adorn the throne and footstool of the Christ child, as if they were echoing in their attire the external visualization of the worth that is placed on this infant, whose hand is raised in blessing.

Angels Catching Fish

Commentary by Jane Heath

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To a modern eye trained by familiarity with later Christian art, this detail from a fourth-century mosaic seems to show angels catching fish in a net. To an affluent ancient Roman viewer, it would probably recall seascapes that they had seen in luxury villas, where winged cupids were frequently portrayed catching fish (Holden 2002: 31).

A very similar motif is found in a non-Christian context in the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily dating to a similar time. In Aquileia, however, this motif is not in a private villa, but in a basilica, which was erected soon after Constantine gave Christians freedom of worship, and was soon to be expanded by the addition of an external baptistery and another basilica. Bishop Theodore’s dedication of the building ‘with support from Almighty God and the heavenly flock’ is celebrated in an inscription in the centre of the mosaic of which this detail is a part. Other parts of the mosaic represent moments in the biblical Jonah narrative, when the sea-monster spews Jonah forth and when Jonah rests under a gourd (McEachnie 2017: 128–29).

Within this context, the winged figures catching fish take on Christian connotations. Fish, fishing, and seascapes were prominent in early Christian imagery, both in texts and in art (Drewer 1981). Fish being drawn up from the sea could be an image of salvation, but in the parable of the dragnet, the emphasis falls on judgement.

Matthew’s imagery begins with the possibility of salvation: all kinds of fish are gathered into the dragnet and the good ones are saved, while the bad are thrown away (Matthew 13:47–48). But it is the latter image on which Matthew rests: at the end of the age, angels will separate the evildoers from the righteous and cast them into the furnace (vv.49–50).

References

Drewer, Lois. 1981. ‘Fisherman and Fish Pond: From the Sea of Sin to the Living Waters’, The Art Bulletin, 63.4: 533–47

Holden, Antonia. 2002. ‘The Cultivation of Upper-Class Otium: Two Aquileian “Oratory” Pavements Reconsidered’, Studies in Iconography 23: 29–54

McEachnie, Robert. 2017. Chromatius of Aquileia and the Making of a Christian City (New York: Routledge)

New Things and Old

Commentary by Jane Heath

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Orthodox icon writing is known for emphasis on tradition. The spiritual practice focuses on learning by copying from a master, not as an exercise in purely technical prowess, but with the humility to learn by careful imitation and the depth to discover a fresh, personal participation in relationship to the saint portrayed, and to God who is known through the face of the saint.

Given such emphasis on tradition, what is an icon writer to do if there is no prior model for the saint portrayed? This dilemma has shaped the relatively new tradition of icon writing at Mull Monastery. Fr. Serafim Aldea has taken numerous commissions for icons of little-known saints. He describes the artistic process of (we might say) bringing out ‘new things and old’ from the treasure of Orthodox iconographic tradition. It is a process of prayer which begins by discerning why the saint has called a particular person into a relationship, and praying for a vision that best encapsulates what that person is being drawn into (Mull Monastery 2017). Spiritually, the icon presents the face of a saint whom the devotee already knew but yearns to see more fully, and by whom they are already known, such that they have only to pay attention to get to know the saint better in return. Artistically, these icons open up a new path within established tradition.

Featured here is St Thaney, Protector of the Abused, whose story models ‘new things from old’ in another way, for she was mother of Saint Mungo by rape (Mull Monastery 2018). So innocent was she, according to the legend, that she did not even recognize the abuse of her rapist. We see her here in the darkness of her lonely pregnancy, rejected by her family, sailing for refuge; but from her story we know that the beautiful life of a new saint will come from her belly, nurtured by her own saintly love. The meaning of Jesus’s words to his disciples about bringing out ‘both new things and old’ is underdetermined within Matthew’s Gospel (Allison and Davies 2004: 447–48), but art and prayer offer one way to develop reflection upon them.

References

Davies, W. D. and Allison, Dale C. 2004. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Volume II: Matthew 8–18 (London: T&T Clark)

Mull Monastery. 2017. ‘St Morwenna and her Treasure’, available at https://icons.mullmonastery.com/st-morwenna-and-her-treasure/ [accessed 10 February 2025]

______. 2018. ‘St Thaney–Protector of the Abused’, available at https://icons.mullmonastery.com/st-thaney-protector-of-the-abused/ [accessed 10 February 2025]

Hope and Penitence

Comparative commentary by Jane Heath

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Jesus’s parables about the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13:44–52 trace three moments. First, there is the joy at finding hidden treasure worth all that one has (vv.44–46); next, the fear at impending judgement, when good will be separated from bad and evildoers punished (vv.47–50); and then an obscure dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. In the course of this exchange, the disciples affirm that they have understood, whereupon he declares that every scribe who is discipled to the kingdom of heaven is like a household manager who brings new and old out of his treasure (vv.51–52). Scholars of the New Testament are unsure what Jesus referred to by ‘new things and old’ (Allison and Davies 2004: 447–48). The three artworks in this exhibition draw us along some pathways of encountering how the saying may be meaningful within a Christian frame.

In her little coracle, floating across cold Scottish seas towards the unknown, raped by a stranger, cast off by her own family who had tried to kill her, St Thaney’s experience of Christ at this moment could not be further from the Magi’s joy at finding the Christ child (see also, Matthew 13:44–46). The Magi had had the initial joy of spotting the star that they had yearned to see; they had had the freedom to go in search of it, and now they have found the infant king and are able to offer him their gifts, and to celebrate him in the company of both heaven and earth. They experience a glimpse of what it is like for the kingdom of heaven to be seen on earth (Spain 1979).

Thaney, by contrast, has had her agency taken from her and she is cast adrift on menacing waters. Her experience is less like the Magi’s and more like that of the fish being dragged up out of the sea for the harsh reality of judgement (see Matthew 13:47–50). She bears the weight of feeling like those who are cut off from God and cast off as evil, despite being the victim of others’ wicked judgements and actions. This is portrayed by the darkness, and the separation between her and the light of heaven, toward which she turns her eyes, but in which she sees no sign toward her. Her experience at this moment is like that of Christ on the cross, whom Matthew portrays crying out in desolation, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:45).

And yet for Christ, this agony was the birth pangs of the new creation that God was bringing about through him. So too Thaney’s agony will be redeemed by Christ, as she will reach the shore where St Serf lives. He will welcome her, and she will give birth to a loving and much-loved saint, known affectionately as ‘Mungo’, which means ‘Beloved’. Looking back, perhaps, she will then—and only then—discover a glimpse of the kingdom of heavens breaking in through the evil of this world. Perhaps she will then rejoice to find that the child in her belly was a most precious pearl, whose worth was established by God, when she had given up everything (see also, Matthew 13:44–46). This triptych thus gives us a window onto the ‘new and old’ treasure. It trains our eyes to new life through Christ, beyond the suffering and sin of an old order. This kind of ‘new and old’ is central to the overarching theology of the gospel.

However, it is likely that within the context of Jesus’s teaching ministry, these parables were also probing relationships to Jewish teaching, now that Christ had come. The ‘old things’ of the law and the prophets are juxtaposed with the ‘new things’ of Christ, without the latter abolishing the former, but rather ‘fulfilling’ them (see Matthew 5:17–18). The three artworks considered here highlight God’s blessings to the Gentiles, symbolised by the Magi who come from afar to worship the King of the Jews; the Christian reinterpretation of pagan mosaic motifs; and the icon of the Celtic saint who gives hope to abuse victims.

But as Margaret Miles (1993) points out, this kind of art also resonates uncomfortably with abuse inflicted by Christians on Jews. Mosaics such as those at Santa Maria Maggiore and Aquileia show the confident self-expression of Christianity on the imperial stage. Jewish types are used only to be cast as mere foreshadowings of the new and greater order that is now here. This paved the way for persecution of the Jews, who were often made to suffer as unjustly as Thaney in her coracle. Contemplated with Matthew 13:44–52, the triptych thus encourages not only Christian hope, but also Christian penitence.

References

Davies, W. D. and Allison, Dale C. (2004) A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Volume II: Matthew 8–18 (London: T&T Clark)

Miles, Margaret. 1993. ‘Santa Maria Maggiore’s Fifth-Century Mosaics: Triumphal Christianity and the Jews’, The Harvard Theological Review, 86.2: 155–75

Mull Monastery. 2018. ‘St Kentigern–Protector of the Bullied’, available at https://icons.mullmonastery.com/st-kentigern-protector-of-the-bullied/ [accessed 10 February 2025]

Spain, Suzanne. 1979. ‘“The Promised Blessing”: The Iconography of the Mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore’, The Art Bulletin, 61.4: 518–40

Next exhibition: Matthew 13:53–58