Robert William Scribner, Religion and Culture in Germany: (1400 - 1800)

5. FROM THE SACRED IMAGE TO THE SENSUAL GAZE: SENSE PERCEPTIONS

AND THE VISUAL IN THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE FEMALE BODY IN
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY
My essay is divided into two parts: remarks on the subject of the sacred image and a
discussion of the subject of the female body. I would like to present the relationship
between the two by using the gaze as an epistemological possibility, i.e. through observations
on the development of visual perception at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the
sixteenth century.1
I
From the sacred image to the sensual gaze: the subject was already anticipated in the
sixteenth century by Martin Bucer and Huldrych Zwingli. Bucer had the following to say
about images in the church in his 1520 Gesprechbiechlin Neuw Karthans:
What should one say here about all the ornamentation in the churches? I can
discover in it no devotion, nor can I imagine that anything good may come of such
frippery I have often had evil thoughts looking at the female figures on the altars, too. No
strumpet is more lasciviously dressed or shamlessly adorned than Mothers of God, Saint
Barbara, Catherine and others are now portrayed.2
Zwingli expressed similar views in 1523:
What a heap of idols we have! The first we dress in armour, as if he were a soldier,
and the next as a scoundrel of brothel-keeper, by which means women are indeed moved to
great devotion. The blessed women are so whorishly made, so smooth and painetd, as if
placed there to incite mens lust.3
And on another occasion, in 1525, he remarked,
Though idols be not forbiden by God, they are so hideously abused that they should
not be tolerated. Here stands a Magdalene so whorishly painted that even priests have always
said: who can maintain devotion here and observe moderation. Yea, even the eternally pure
and immaculate maid and mother of Jesus Christ had to have breasts bared. There stands
Sebastian, a Maurice and the pious John the Baptist so nobly, manfully and sensualy |
depicted| that the women had to confess because of them4
1

The arguments are developed in the preceding chapters, and in my essays Das Visuelle in der Volksfrmmigkeit, in Bob
Scribner and Martin Warnke, eds, Bild und Bildersturm im Sptmittelalter und in der frhen Neuzeit (Weisbaden, 1990), 919;
Reformatorische Bildpropaganda, in Brigitte Tolkemitt and Rainer Wohlfeil, ed., Historische Bildkunde, Probleme Wege Beispiele (Zeitschrift fr historische Forschung, Beiheft 12, Berlin 1991), 83-106.
2
Martin Bucer, Deutsche Schriften, Robert Stupperich, ed., 1 (Gtersloh, 1960), 428.
3
Huldrych Zwingli, Auslegung des 20. Artikels in Emil Egli, ed., Smtliche Werke 2 (Leipzig, 1908), 218.

As Zwingli expressly mentions, this criticism of pictures in the churches arose not merely
from the biblical prohibition on graven images, but also from a rejection of all sensuality in
worship those days. Along with his remarks on sensual pictures, Bucer also emphasises that
in truth, when I was a lad and heard the organ playing in church it made me feel like
dancing. And when I heard singing, it moved my flesh but not my spirit.5
Late-medieval popular piety was, in several respects, a piety of the gaze. It proceeded from
the assumption that people could apprehend the sacred through seeing (visio). This
assumption rested on certain epistemological principles: the visible world was a sign of the
invisible one and human beings could attain knowledge of the supernatural through the
signifying capacity of the natural. The perceptible world thus became a complex semiotic
system that the human senses could unlock.6
A central ordering function was assigned to seeing in the sense of visio, which was
represented particularly by the elevatio during the Mass. As we saw in the previous chapter,
the Elevation was primarily a moment of display, the most concise moment of seeing in the
liturgy. I call this type of seeing the sacramental gaze, a mode which is perhaps
epistemologically colser to the practice of popular piety than other forms of devotional
seeing such as the edifying gaze, which was derived from the well-known saying that
pictures were the books of the common man, or the mystical gaze in the sense of the
Mystics teachings on images.7 During the act of sacramental seeing, the perception of the
sacred was initiated by an extended, contemplative encounter with the eyes of the depicted
person. A good example is the very popular fifteenth-century imago pietatis on the Veronicacloth.8 The encounter was also emotionally heightened by a combination of eye contact and
gestures of appeal, as in the Ecce homo pictures, for example the 1522 version by Hans
Weidnitz (Figure 1).9 This type of devout gaze created a personal encounter between image
and beholder, which is a particular characteristic of the late medieval sacred image. It was an
important precondition for the three typical traits of the sacred image, which eas an object
imbued with sacred power and indwelling personality, capable of entering into a relationship
with the devout viewer.