Finding Christ in roots and seeds: crucifixes produced by nature in Quaresmio’s Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio

Abstract

In his Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio (1639), Francesco Quaresmio devotes a digression to three highly peculiar objects: two plant roots grown into the shape of a crucifix (one of them discovered in the vicinity of Jerusalem), and a figure of the crucified Christ sprouted from a nut collected by a pilgrim near the Holy Sepulchre. This article explores the methods employed by Quaresmio in the study of these objects, which belonged to a larger group of images apparently produced by nature discussed in the works of late medieval and early modern travellers, religious writers, natural historians and antiquarians. It examines the use that Quaresmio made of autopsy, visual reproduction, and witness interviews in researching the history of the three crucifixes. At the same time, it shows how his adoption of empirical methods went hand in hand with devotional preoccupations, bringing to the forefront Quaresmio’s conception of the relationship between nature and the divine, as well as his belief in the complementarity of natural evidence, historical knowledge, and biblical exegesis.

Keywords:

• Francesco Quaresmio
• nature
• miraculous images
• empiricism
• Holy Land

Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to Sundar Henny and Richard Oosterhoff for inviting me to contribute to this volume. Michele Bacci, Barbara Baert, Cloe Cavero de Carondelet, Chiara Franceschini, Sylvia Greenup, and Jos Koldeweij generously shared with me their expertise during the writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. On Quaresmio and the Elucidatio see, in particular, Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 123–5; Pizzorusso, “Quaresmi, Francesco”; Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 191–211; Leahy and Tully, Jerusalem Afflicted; and Estelle Ingrand-Varenne’s contribution to the present volume.

2. For a chronology of Quaresmio’s life see Pizzorusso, “Quaresmi, Francesco,” and Leahy and Tully, Jerusalem Afflicted, 70–1. On the Franciscan engagement in the Holy Land during the early modern period, see Armstrong, The Holy Land, ch. 6.

3. Beaver, “Scholarly Pilgrims,” 278–9; Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 120–2. On the practice of virtual pilgrimages see also Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages; Beebe, “The Jerusalem”; and Sugiyama, Images and Indulgences, ch. 2.

4. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 3–49.

5. Ibid., 17–19.

6. Ibid., 25–26.

7. For an overview of images produced by nature in European culture, see Baltrušaitis, “Pierres imagées”; Findlen, “Jokes of Nature”; and Adamowsky, Böhme, and Felfe, Ludi Naturae.

8. Cardano, De subtilitate, 372–7, 384; Gessner, De rerum fossilium, especially 86v–96r, 141v–143v; Gaffarel, Curiositez inouyes, ch. 5; Aldrovandi and Ambrosini, Musaeum metallicum, 724–79; Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, vol. 2, book 8.

9. Despite the number of sources concerning them and the many episodes of veneration to which they gave rise, religious images produced by nature – although sporadically mentioned in studies such as those listed in note 7 – have largely been neglected by present-day historians. I am currently working on a project that will examine the place occupied by these objects in Western culture between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century.

10. On this topic, see the classic study by Maurice Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire, as well as Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, for an overview of more recent bibliography.

11. Bacci, “Epigoni,” 50–5. For an overview on sacred imprints, see Bynum, Dissimilar Similitudes, ch. 6.

12. As general references on acheiropoietic images, see Bacci, Il pennello, and Kessler and Wolf, The Holy Face.

13. For the religious tradition, see Bacci, “Epigoni,” 53. Dendrites considered as natural products appear for instance in Imperato, Dell’historia naturale, 662; Worm, Museum Wormianum, 44–5; Terzago, Musaeum Septalianum, 41.

14. See, among others, Amico, Trattato delle piante, 14; Gaffarel, Curiositez inouyes, 164; Aldrovandi and Ambrosini, Musaeum metallicum, 756; Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, 2: 33, 39. On the history of this image, see Bacci, “Epigoni,” 53–4; Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 121–2; and Bacci, The Mystic Cave, 230–1.

15. Wis, “Fructus,” 13–18; Bacci, “Epigoni,” 55.

16. Consider, for instance, the vegetable images of the cross reported by missionaries from Chile (Ovalle, Historica relatione, 59–61) and Japan (Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, 2: 47–8).

17. Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 1.

18. See Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 125; and Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 111.

19. On sixteenth-century sacred antiquarianism see Sawilla, Antiquarianismus, and Grafton, Inky Fingers, 78–104; on Spanish relics, Beaver, “A Holy Land,” 61–107.

20. Leahy and Tully, Jerusalem Afflicted, 71.

21. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 18. According to the author, the crucifix had been originally gifted to the female Augustinian monastery of a nearby city, Deinze. When this monastery was destroyed by Protestants in 1584 (see Lanclus, “Klooster van Deynze”), the nuns fled to Ekkergem, bringing the crucifix with them.

22. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 18.

23. Quaresmio relates the history of this convent in the chapters preceding his description of the lily crucifix: Elucidatio, 2: 14–15, with the hypothesis on 17.

24. Ibid., 18.

25. Ibid.: “Haec a me studiose observata accipe”; see Pomata, “Observation”; Daston, “The Empire.” On the terminology used to define observation and autopsy, see also Pomata, “A Word of the Empirics.”

26. See the essays collected in Pomata and Siraisi, Historia (especially Mulsow, “Antiquarianism,” 189–93).

27. See Ditchfield, “Thinking,” 564–70; Olds, “The Ambiguities”; Biggi, “Les images.”

28. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 18.

29. Ibid.; cf. John 18: 22.

30. Franceschini, “Too Many Wounds,” 54–5.

31. For an introduction to the use of visual reproduction in these different domains, see Burke, “Images”; Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature; Moser, “Making”; and Franceschini, “Too Many Wounds.”

32. Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 134; Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 18.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 574.

35. See Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, ch. 3, especially fig. 22. For the late medieval tradition, see also Worm, Geschichte und Weltordnung, 330–47. For an example not belonging to pilgrimage accounts, cf. Harpster, “Sacred Images,” 162–3.

36. On the tradition of holy measurement, see Jacoby, “Heilige Längenmasse”; Areford, “The Passion”; Naujokat, Non est hic, 133–40; Beaver, “A Holy Land,” 197–203; Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, ch. 3.

37. For full-scale images of natural specimens, see Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 37–40, 107, 110. For examples of relics and ancient artefacts reproduced in their actual size, cf. for instance Bosio, Crux, 62–7 (titulus crucis), 70 (coin from Rhodes). It has been suggested that the pilgrims’ practice of collecting natural and artificial mementos of their experiences (such as metal badges, botanical specimens and so on), as well as of keeping them sewn or pressed inside books, may have influenced the spread of life-size illustrations of objects in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts: Kaufmann and Roehrig Kaufmann, “The Sanctification.”

38. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 25–6.

39. Examples of seventeenth-century writings in which exceptional sacred images are grouped into categories and compared to one another include Jacob Gretser’s Syntagma de imaginibus manu non factis (a treatise on acheiropoieta published in 1625) and the Atlas Marianus by Wilhelm Gumppenberg (on miraculous representations of the Virgin, 1657–1659).

40. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 25–6; Bosio, Crux, 159–60.

41. Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 1–3.

42. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 26. An earlier edition of the leaflet, containing the same text, was published in 1607 by the engraver Leonard Streel (digital reproduction: http://hdl.handle.net/2268.1/5052).

43. “Et quod praedicta vera sunt, scimus per experientiam: quia ea pro parte oculis nostris vidimus, et relatu multorum peregrinorum audivimus esse vera” (quoted in Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 26). Statements of this kind, aimed at reassuring readers of the reliability of what was being described, were a staple of popular broadsheets giving news of prodigies and wonders: see Parshall, “Imago Contrafacta,” 564–7.

44. Consider, for instance, the documents required by ecclesiastical authorities in order to sanction the coronation of miraculous images of the Virgin: Bacci, Il pennello, 373–80.

45. See Kemp, “Wrought by No Artist’s Hand,” and further Findlen, Possessing Nature.

46. On the dilemmas that medieval and early modern scholars faced when trying to distinguish between natural and artificial, see Daston, “Nature by Design.” Ideas and practices involving falsification in early modern scholarship are examined in Beretta and Conforti, Fakes!?

47. Cardano, De subtilitate, 373; Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, 2: 44–5.

48. This date is mentioned on two devotional engravings made in the seventeenth century: Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, cat. nos. RP-P-OB-78.327 (http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.440859) and RP-P-OB-59.057 (http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.173023).

49. Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 1.

50. See Rauch, “Alraune,” and Hauschild, “Eppendorfer Alraune.”

51. Van Schaïk, “Wyck,” 1151.

52. On the problem of whether ancient, foreign, or otherwise unusual works of art were particularly liable to be perceived as miraculous images, see Garnett and Rosser, Spectacular Miracles, 83–91; Bacci, “Images à la grecque”; and Bacci, “Cross-Mediterranean,” 144–7, 153.

53. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 169. On Christ’s footprints cf. the introduction to this Special Issue; Henny and Oosterhoff, “Knowing Like a Pilgrim.”

54. Ibid., 312.

55. Cf. ibid., 18, 26.

56. On the distinction between miracles and prodigies in early modern thought, see Daston, “Marvelous Facts.”

57. See for instance Ovalle, Historica relatione, 60.

58. See for instance Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, 2: 48 and Gaffarel, Curiositez inouyes, ch. 5.

59. A good comparison is provided by Ovalle, Historica relatione, 59–61, 329–30.

60. Cf. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 20: “Excellentia prodigiosae radicis lilii, […] manifeste ac clare representat ipsiusmet Crucifixi Christi Iesu effigiem at figuram naturae artificio prodigiose sculptam.”

61. Ibid., 25: “alter in Hispania, alter in Belgio natus est.”

62. Ibid., 26 and see Bosio, Crux, 159: “Naturae partus plane admirabilis, in quo enixa videtur fuisse, ut in plantis quoque ipsis sui nostrique domini passionis memoriam insculperet et conservaret: nisi tamen id praecipuo miraculo adscribere velimus.”

63. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 17: “suggerit Dominus, ut curiose terram, unde exortum fuerat, effoderent, ut unde originem traxisset, contemplarentur.” On the concept of curiosity in early modern science, see Daston and Park, Wonders, 315–16; for its presence in pilgrimage writings, Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 12–13; Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 108–15.

64. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 17.

65. For a general introduction to the evolution of this idea in early modern thought, see the essays collected in The World and the Word.

66. Although Quaresmio makes no mention of this, all the plants from which the three crucifixes had supposedly grown had symbolic connections with Christ. The figure venerated in Valladolid is fashioned from a vine root, a material with Christological (“I am the true vine,” John 15:1) and eucharistic connotations. The Maastricht crucifix, which according to tradition sprouted from a nut, is indeed made of walnut wood (van Schaïk, “Wyck,” 1151). An influential passage from a sermon attributed to St Augustine (PL 39, 2198) interprets the walnut as an emblem of Christ: the husk and kernel signify respectively his human and divine nature, while the shell is a symbol of the cross. Since the Ghent crucifix is no longer preserved, it is impossible to say what material it was actually made of. It is not surprising, however, that it came to be associated with a lily. As Quaresmio’s references amply show, the lily occupied an eminent place in Christian symbolism. In addition, the pilgrims that allegedly brought the crucifix to Belgium were townsmen of Courtrai, on the river Lys (Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 17). The same river flows through Deinze and Ghent, where the crucifix was later transferred. The homonymy between “Lys” and the French word for “lily” might have strengthen the symbolic importance of this plant for local devotees.

67. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 20–1. Cf. Isa. 11.

68. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 24. Cf. Isa. 11: 10: “In die illa radix Iesse, qui stat in signum populorum, ipsum gentes deprecabuntur.”

69. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 2: 23. Cf. Valeriano, Hieroglyphica, 401v–402v.

70. See also the introduction to this Special Issue on balancing various types of sources; Henny and Oosterhoff, “Knowing Like a Pilgrim.”

71. See Ashworth, “Natural History,” whose conclusions are further discussed by Pinon, “Conrad Gessner.”

72. Pinon, “Conrad Gessner,” 251–3.

73. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 1: 565. Cf. Bosio, Crux, 165.

74. Quaresmio, Elucidatio, 1: 565.

75. On the implications of these divisions for Franciscans in the Holy Land see Armstrong, The Holy Land, ch. 6.

76. Ibid., 337–41.

77. Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 74.

78. Ibid., 74, 79. See also Harrison, “Reinterpreting.”

79. Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 79–81.

80. On such attitudes, see Walsham, The Reformation, 360–75, and 353 regarding natural images decried as Catholic frauds. For an example of a sceptical but more lenient approach to the matter, cf. the reaction of the English Protestant traveller George Sandys to the mineral silhouette of St Jerome in the nativity Cave in Bethlehem: Sandys, A Relation, 180–1.

81. Respectively, see examples in Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 1–3, and Nider, Formicarius, 292–3; Ovalle, Historica relatione, 330, and Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, 47 (Kircher relies on reports sent from China and Japan by Michał Boym and other Jesuit missionaries); and Harpsfield, Dialogi sex, 504–5.

82. Poggibonsi, A Voyage; Suriano, Treatise, esp. 219–33. On Franciscan Holy Land scholarship, see Campopiano, Writing the Holy Land.

83. See Zorzi, De harmonia mundi, XXX–XXXI; Beaver, “From Jerusalem to Toledo,” 55.

84. Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land.

85. As in the case of the Blumen-Buch by Electus Zwinner (1661). See also Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land, 163.

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Notes on contributors

Lea Debernardi

Lea Debernardi is a former research fellow of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She has published on the visual and written culture of Franco-Italian aristocracy between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, as well as on the development and circulation of Christian allegories in late medieval and early modern art. Her current project explores the place occupied by sacred images purportedly produced by nature in Western science and devotion.