Donne’s balanced approach to the question of images in both of these poems is characteristic of his negotiation between the extremes of idolatry and iconoclasm which is to be found in both his sermons and his poetry. Writing as he was in a society that found the material image highly suspect, one of his apophatic moves in both “The Crosse” and “Good friday” is to replace the crucifix as a material devotional image with an internal crucifix that works on man to reveal the image of God within him. Both poems confront the potentially idolatrous status of the crucifix as a visual work of art, and redeem or rehabilitate it. In both cases the crucifix is internalised, but despite this process of internalisation the two crosses do not lose their associations with the material, physical world of the visual artwork. The very idea of an internalised image of the Crucifixion itself also has Lutheran echoes, as Luther evoked an internal crucifix in his anti-iconoclastic pamphlet Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament (1525) (Against the heavenly prophets in the matter of images and sacraments). Many of Donne’s sermons preaching moderation on the question of images use language that suggests he is advocating a Lutheran approach to images.
In his 1627 sermon on Hosea 3:4 preached at Paul’s Cross, Donne lays out his balanced approach to the image question. He cites Calvin, who argues that (in Donne’s words), “where there is a frequent preaching, there is no necessity of pictures” but qualifies this with “but will not every man adde this, That if the true use of Pictures bee preached unto them, there is no danger of an abuse”. He continues:
And since, by being taught the right use of these pictures, in our preaching, no man amongst us, is any more enclined, or endangered to worship a picture in a Wall or Window of the Church, then if he saw it in a Gallery, were it onely for a reverent adorning of the place, they may bee retained here, as they are in the greatest part of the Reformed Church, and in all that, that is properly Protestant. (7: 432)
Louis Martz argues that Donne is using the term Protestant here “with strict etymological, legal and historical accuracy to designate the Lutherans, the original protestantes”. He parallels this instance of Donne’s use of the word with the lines from Satyre 3, some twenty years previously: “To’adore, or scorne an Image, or protest, / May all be bad” (ll. 76–77). Here too, Martz claims, Donne is using the very precise definition of the term “protest”. He continues:
As the
OED explains, “in the sixteenth century the name
Protestant was generally taken in Germany by the Lutherans, while the Swiss and French called themselves
Reformed”. […] Here Donne is treating the
Reformed Church as larger than strict Calvin and distinguishing the
Reformed from the Lutheran – those
properly called
Protestant, who retained much of the old imagery and ritual.
1 Louis M. Martz, “Donne, Herbert and the Worm of Controversy”, in Wrestling with God: Literature and Theology in the English Renaissance: Essays to Honour Paul Grant Stanwood, ed. by Mary Ellen Henley and W. Speed Hill, Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 7 (2001): 1–28 (pp. 22–23).Elsewhere in the Sermons Donne uses the terms Reformed and Protestant more loosely, for example in another 1627 sermon where he speaks of practices “in the Reformed Churches, in both sub-divisions, Lutheran and Calvinist” (8: 105). However in the particular sermon on images, where Reformed and Protestant appear in the same sentence and are contrasted, it seems legitimate to read them as Martz suggests. It is also worth noting that on both the occasions that Donne seems to use Protestant to mean Lutheran, he is discussing images.
Donne’s ambivalence in these sermons in many ways echoes that of Luther himself. For while Luther had condemned the abuse of images, particularly in the context of the system of patronage whereby wealthy donors were rewarded with indulgences, he took great exception to a spate of iconoclasm that took place in Wittenberg in January and February 1522, and Karlstadt’s continuing iconoclastic preaching in the following years. In early 1522, while Luther was still in the Wartburg, the castle where he went into hiding following his excommunication, there was an outbreak of iconoclasm in Wittenberg (and in Eilenburg) that was legitimated by a council order stating that images and altars should be removed from churches. Luther returned from his exile in time to halt the worst excesses of iconoclasm,
2 See Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Central Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 17–31; Koerner, Reformation of the Image, pp. 159–164. and preached a series of anti-iconoclastic sermons, eventually published the pamphlet
Wider die himmlischen Propheten (1525).
In “The Crosse” and “Good friday” we saw Donne engaging with contemporary anxieties about image worship while using visual and physical metaphors to insist on the material, corrective effects of the cross working within the heart. A similar interaction of image and iconoclasm animates his Holy Sonnet “What if this present were the world’s last night”, and this poem too can be read in the context of Luther’s theology of the cross and his writings on iconoclasm. Specifically, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, with its evocation of a crucifix in the heart, sheds some light on the “picture of Christ crucified”, “marked in the heart” in Donne’s highly complex sonnet, and helps to situate it at the centre of the English iconoclastic controversy.
The sonnet starts not with the Crucifixion but with the thought of the Last Judgement:
What if this present were the worlds last night?
Mark in my hart Ô Soule where thou dost dwell,
The Picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright… (ll. 1–4)
3 Holy Sonnet 9, Revised Sequence, Stringer et al., eds., Variorum 7.1: Holy Sonnets, p. 25.The vertical juxtaposition of “the worlds last night” with “the Picture of Christ crucified” evokes the traditional pairing of the Crucifixion with the Last Judgement in the rood screens of pre-Reformation churches, very few of which survived the iconoclasm of the sixteenth century. Diarmaid MacCulloch opens his study of the Reformation in Europe with an example of one such rood screen, the Wenhaston Doom in Suffolk (fig. 4),
4 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004), pp. 6–7. which proves curiously appropriate as an introduction to Donne’s sonnet. St Peter Wenhaston’s surviving early sixteenth-century tympanum showing the Last Judgement is vividly coloured, and would have filled the top of the chancel arch of the church. The great rood, or crucifix, which would more often have hung below the Judgement tympanum, was in this case superimposed on it. MacCulloch focuses on this particular example because of the iconoclasm it endured and, incredibly, survived. The Wenhaston image was defaced in the 1540s and the rood and the figures surrounding it ripped off, but the outlines of the crucifix and the figures of Mary and John are still clearly visible as blank spaces on the doom painting which would have been behind them, both present and absent in the image.
5 St Peter Wenhaston http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/wenhaston.html. Paradoxically, the iconoclasm of the 1540s also ensured the preservation of the partial image, since the doom painting was whitewashed over and replaced with the royal coat of arms. It stayed in this state until the discovery of the underpainting during the renovation of the church in 1894.
Like the ghost of the crucifix in the Doom painting, the crucifix in Donne’s sonnet is poised between image and iconoclasm, between material object and memory. As in “The Crosse” and “Good friday”, the vocabulary of the poem insists on the physical characteristics of this “Picture of Christ crucified”, at the same time as “marking” it as an internal image in the speaker’s heart. The description of the crucifix in the octave insists on the physical characteristics of the “picture”, while the first line of the sestet introduces the notion of “Idolatrie” (l. 7), and the concluding line, “This beauteous forme assures a pitious minde” (l. 14), seems to privilege the visual form, rather than the word, as evidence. The sestet’s vocabulary of beauty and idolatry offers a key to reading the sonnet as a whole. While the very use of the term idolatry calls images into question, and raises the spectre of iconoclasm, it is not the picture of Christ crucified that is the most immediately controversial image. The crucifix is summoned up in order to counter the image of the Last Judgement that opens the sonnet. For the speaker of this sonnet, it is the Judgement, rather than the crucifix, that is problematic. The sonnet opposes two conflicting images of Christ, Christ Judge and Christ-Redeemer, which, it seems, are not only incompatible but locked in conflict.
The impression of a potentially idolatrous image in the heart resonates with much of the rhetoric for and against images in the 1520s in Wittenberg. Much debate focused on whether idolatry was located in the eye or in the heart. Luther stated in 1529 that images were not the problem, because true idolatry was in the heart, not in the eye: “vera idolatria est in corde” (WA, 27, p. 586), while the iconoclast argument can be summed up in the words of Zwingli, “ab Auge, ab Herz”: once images were removed from the eye, they would be removed from the heart. In Wider die himmlischen Propheten, Luther reproached Karlstadt with removing images from the eye but not from the heart, and, in a passage with many similarities to Donne’s “What if this present”, he argued that it might be natural to have an image of Christ in our hearts, and therefore why should it be a sin to have such an image before our eyes?
So weys ich aus gewiss, das Gott wil haben, man solle seyne werck hören und lesen, sonderlich das leyden Christi. Soll ichs aber hören odder gedencken, so ist myrs unmüglich, das ich nicht ynn meym hertzen sollt bilde davon machen, denn ich wolle, odder wolle nicht, wenn ich Christum hore, so entwirfft sich ynn meym hertzen eyn mans bilde, das am creuze henget, gleich als sich meyn andlitz naturlich entwirfft yns wasser, wenn ich dreyn sehe. Ists nu nicht sunde sondern gut, das ich Christus bilde ym hertze habe, warumb sollts sunde seyn, wenn ichs ynn augen habe?
[I know for certain that God desires that one should hear and read his work, and especially the passion of Christ. But if I am to hear and think, then it is impossible for me not to make images of this within my heart, for whether I want to or not, when I hear the word Christ, there delineates itself in my heart the picture of a man who hangs on the cross, just as my face naturally delineates itself on the water, when I look into it. If it is not a sin, but a good thing, that I have Christ’s image in my heart, why then should it be sinful to have it before my eyes?]
6 WA, 18, p. 83; translation LW 40: 99–100. There is no evidence that Donne read this passage by Luther, particularly since it does not seem to have been translated into Latin or English in the sixteenth century, but Luther’s idea of the inner crucifix became “canonical” and widely disseminated in Lutheran circles.
7 Koerner, Reformation, p. 56.Donne’s internal crucifix resembles Luther’s in many ways. Both have a highly ambivalent status. Luther’s crucifix is explicitly inspired by the word, by his hearing the word “Christ”. In the hierarchy of words and images, words clearly come first, although the two are “naturally” connected. Words, once internalised, become pictures, but, as Luther makes clear, there is no question of will or agency on the part of the listener: “whether I want to or not, when I hear the word Christ, there delineates itself in my heart the picture of a man who hangs on the cross …” Joseph Leo Koerner discusses Luther’s use of the verb
entwerfen (to delineate) “to name this generation of pictures by words”. The verb was generally used in Middle and Early New High German to refer to an artist’s preliminary sketch. Luther’s reflexive use of the verb highlights the idea that the listener does not consciously visualise the image of the crucifix; it “delineates itself” (
entwirft sich). Koerner deconstructs the word to suggest that since
entwerfen derives from the verb
werfen (to throw),
entwerfen might be associated with the Latin
proicere (project, literally to throw forward). Thus “Christ’s picture ‘projects itself’ in the heart in the way an object casts a shadow. Automatically, as if due to natural conditions, words generate pictures”.
8 Koerner, Reformation, p. 161. Yet Koerner’s deconstruction of
entwerfen reveals an uncertainty regarding the genesis of the internal crucifix which Luther’s use of the word
natürlich sought to dispel. Luther’s image of the man on the cross is curiously suspended between the reflected and the projected, the natural and the created.
The status of Donne’s image is equally conflicted, and this ambiguity centres on the verb “mark” which begins the second line of the sonnet. The persona instructs his “soule” to “mark in [his] heart … the picture of Christ crucified”. Earlier manuscript versions have a variant of this line: “Looke in my heart, O Soule…”, and the Variorum edition of the Holy Sonnets attests that “mark” is an authorial correction.
9 Stringer et al., eds., Variorum 7.1: Holy Sonnets, p. 88. While the earlier “looke in my heart”, with its echoes of Sidney’s
Astrophel and Stella,
10 “Foole, said my muse to me, looke in thy heart and write”, Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella in The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, Written by Sir Philip Sidney Knight (William Ponsonbie, 1598), pp. 519–569 (p. 519). denotes quite simply the contemplation of the crucifix (already a problematic act), the change to “mark” opens up other connotations. For while “mark” may indeed mean “to take notice of mentally; to consider; to give one’s attention to” (OED) in the sense of “mark well”, the word also has the sense of “making a mark on something by drawing, stamping, branding, cutting, staining, etc”. (OED). These two potential meanings of “mark” give two opposed interpretations of the status of the image in the persona’s heart: either the picture of Christ crucified is already there and the soul is merely being instructed to meditate on it, or the soul actively inscribes the image in the heart. Yet another meaning of the word “mark” may further complicate the sonnet: an older denotation in the OED has “to make the sign of the cross upon (a person, a person’s heart, forehead, etc.)”. The connotations of “mark” then range from mental contemplation to the very physical actions of stamping, branding and cutting. The change from “look” to “mark” suggests that the act of looking at images contains within it the possibility of making images. As with Luther’s argument that the formation of a mental picture justifies the contemplation of an actual picture, here the mental image evokes the existence of a physical crucifix.
Very different critics of this sonnet have reacted to the physicality of the description of the crucifix by picturing a physical crucifix and indeed situating it in a particular school of art. Stevie Davies reads this particular sonnet as an example of Donne’s “mannerist perspective […] contracting the conflict of the Passion into one line”. Her identification of Donne with the Baroque and Mannerist tradition echoes R. V. Young’s suggestion that Donne’s “graphic image of the Crucifixion suggest[s] a Spanish baroque painting”, and his proposal of a contemporary “visual analogue” in Velázquez’s
Christ on the Cross (1599–1600).
11 Stevie Davies, John Donne (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1994), p. 25; Young, Doctrine and Devotion, pp. 24–25. The association with the baroque relates directly to the sonnet’s insistence on both the “beauteous forme” and the suffering body of Christ. The blood and tears of the crucified Christ function as the subjects of the verbs “fills” (l. 6) and “quench” (l. 5) respectively, and these physical details become particularly important when we consider that Donne’s crucifix is raised in the second line of the sonnet as a preferable alternative to the image of the Last Judgement, which was evoked in the first line with the phrase “the worlds last night”. The introduction of the crucifix challenges the authority of the image of Christ as Judge, causing the speaker to demand “whether that countenance can thee affright?” The following lines move between iconographic details of Christ’s face in both Crucifixion and Judgement, from the “tears in the eyes” of Christ crucified to the “amazing light” in the eyes of the Judge; from the bloody brow of the suffering Christ to the frown of the Judge; from the condemnation of the Judge to the forgiveness of the Saviour. Christ’s “countenance” is divided into two, and the speaker of the sonnet oscillates between these two, apparently incompatible, faces of Christ.
Like his internal crucifix, Donne’s simultaneous attraction to and rejection of Judgement has parallels in Luther’s writings. Luther repeatedly objects strongly both to the iconography and the doctrinal implications of the Last Judgement. He evokes the rainbow, the lily and the sword of judgement paintings, only to argue that these constitute a false view of Christ.
12 WA, 8, pp. 677–678; WA, 33, pp. 538–539; WA, 45, p. 482, and in many other places. For an anthology of Luther’s remarks about the iconography of the Last Judgement, see Hans Preuss, Martin Luther der Kunstler (Güttersloh, 1931), pp. 35–37. Luther rejects the fear that the Last Judgement was intended to instil in the faithful, and argues that if we have faith, we have no need to fear Christ (WA, 47, p. 102). Salvation, according to Luther, can only be achieved through Christ and the cross, and therefore Judgement, which implies the weighing of men’s acts and works during their lives, is part of the older system of belief which must be rejected. Luther approves of the Gospel of John, particularly the verse “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (Jn 3:17), and comments that indeed man should not regard Christ as a Judge or a terrible Lord, but rather as a Saviour and a friend (WA, 48, p. 135). In another commentary on John’s Gospel, Luther states: “therefore you must have a picture of Christ that is different from the one you were taught; you must not look upon him as a judge … No, if you have sinned, He is the Light of the World and judges no-one” (LW, 23, p. 337).
13 “Darumb bilde dir Christum anders fur, denn sie gelereret haben, nicht als einen Richter […] sondern hast du gesundiget, so ist er das Liecht der Welt, er richtet niemand” (WA, 33, p. 542). We must, Luther says, find another mental picture of Christ to replace the image of Christ in Judgement that we have inherited from the Papacy. And in a sermon preached in 1519 on “preparing to die” Luther states that Christ on the cross prepared himself as “
ein dreyfeltig bild” (a three-fold picture) for us, with which we could drive out the “
gegen bild” (counterpictures) of death, sin and hell, all of which Luther associated with the Last Judgement (WA, 2, p. 691; p. 695; LW, 42, p. 106; p. 111).
Luther’s language here suggests the idea of images in competition with each other: the good image of the Crucifixion can counter its opposite, the image of death, sin and hell united in the Last Judgement. A very similar process takes place in Donne’s sonnet, as the image of Christ in Judgement is replaced by its opposite, the “Picture of Christ crucified”. The last two lines of the octave explain the doctrinal problem behind the iconographic confusion: how can Christ both condemn and forgive? How can Saviour and Judge be the same person? Luther’s objection to the iconography of the Last Judgement was that anyone who truly had faith had nothing to fear from Judgement, because salvation could only be achieved through faith in Christ. By establishing the Lutheran image of the internal crucifix in his heart, the speaker of this sonnet attempts to place all his faith in the salvatory power of the Crucifixion, and in doing so, to blot out his fear of Judgement.
Although in the first three lines of the sonnet there is a clear distinction between two different images – “the worlds last night” and “Christ crucified” – from line 4 onwards, they begin to merge. It is difficult to distinguish which “countenance” (l. 4) is being described, as iconographic details from the picture of Christ crucified are superimposed on those of Christ in Judgement in the space of single lines. The tears of Christ crucified “quench” the light from the eyes of Christ in Judgement; the blood from the wounds of the Saviour “fills” the frowns of the Judge. The image of Christ the Judge is extinguished and smoothed out by the physical effluence from the body of Christ crucified. In a sonnet which explicitly evokes “idolatrie” and the iconoclastic controversy, the image of Christ Judge is erased by the image of Christ Saviour. The picture of Christ crucified, itself the victim of so many iconoclastic attacks, here performs an act of iconoclasm, effacing – or even defacing – the image of the “worlds last night”. The image of Christ’s divinity is replaced by Christ’s humanity. The ambiguity surrounding the word “mark”, however, means that it remains unclear whether this internal iconoclasm is an action willed by the speaker of the poem, or whether he is merely the witness of it.