Jews and Slavs 23 Rodov

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM CENTER FOR SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

JEWS AND SLAVS

Series edited by Prof. Wolf Moskovich

Volum 23

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM CENTER FOR SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

SIEDLCE UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES INSTITUTE OF NEOPHILOLOGY AND INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

JEWS AND SLAVS

Volume 23

Edited by Wolf Moskovich, Roman Mnich and Renata Tarasiuk

Jerusalem - Siedlce 2013

Jews and Slavs, vol. 23

Edited by Wolf Moskovich, Roman Mnich and Renata Tarasiuk

Typesetting and Text Makeup Roman Bobryk Proofread by authors

2013 by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Center of Slavic Languages and Literatures

2013 by Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities Institute of Neophilology and Interdisciplinary Research

ISBN 978-83-63307-72-1

Contact address:

Prof. Wolf Moskovich P.O.Box 7823 Jerusalem 91078 Israel

e-mail: [email protected]

Ilia Rodov (Jerusalem)

Kabbalistic Traces in a Russian Old-Believer Painting

A Russian folk painting, recorded as "Illustration to the Book of Exodus", in the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow (Fig. 1) represents the Ten Commandments, each enclosed within a medallion, against a great tree that dominates the image of the Giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. The depic-tions in the margins illustrate scenes from the Book of Exodus, which antecede and follow the Giving of the Law, and the text in the bottom briefly describes them. The present article examines this peculiar representation of the Com-mandments in its local and inter-cultural contexts.

The Museum acquired the picture lacking the artist's signature and a date, from a certain P. S. Kuznetsov, a collector of Russian folk art, in 1900. This is a tempera painting, with ink outlining and inscriptions, on a large sheet of paper (52 72.5 cm). The technique, as well as the figures dressed in red and the flat-tened landscape, closely resemble the nave version of the late-Byzantine cano-nic style in the Old-Believer art in northern Russia1. The Old Believers, dissen-ters who broke off from the Russian Orthodox Church because of the reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon since 1652, fled to the hardly accessible northern lands to escape repression by the state and ecclesiastic authorities in the central regions of the country. Their communities of the Vyg River and Leksa River hermitages in Russian Karelia became the leading centers of Old-Believer cul-ture and art2. In the mid-1850s, the new wave of persecutions of the Old Belie-vers suppressed the work of Vygo-Leksa painting workshops, and production of similar icons and pictures on paper continued secretly in other dissenter communities in northern Russia3. The language and script of the inscriptions in the "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" is the Old Moscow recension of Church Slavonic that was in use among the Old Believers. It is likely that they, mostly

1 See E. I. Itkina: XVIII - XX . - , (Russian Painted Lubok from the Late-18th to Early-20th Century: From the Collection of the State Historical Museum, Moscow). Moscow 1992, pp. 19293, no. 45. I cordially thank the author of this book, a curator of the Department of Pictorial Materials in the State Historical Mu-seum in Moscow, for her kind help and advice. 2 See R. O. Crummey: The Old Believers and the World of the Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 16941855. Madison 1970. 3 E. I. Itkina: , pp. 2427.

Ilia Rodov (Jerusalem) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

14

highly literate people, used the images and inscriptions in the paper paintings hung on a wall in their homes4 for contemplations and homilies.

Prior to the discussion of the tree of the Ten Commandments, several other aspects of the representation of the theophany in the "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" should be examined. The depiction of the angels with trum-pets, a kneeling Moses receiving the Tablets from God (top center), Aaron facing the Israelites who pray to the Golden Calf (bottom left), and broken Tab-lets (bottom center) follows the Hermeneies, Eastern Orthodox manuals of ico-nography. One of the most popular of those, Dionysius of Fourna's compilation of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hermeneia texts5, postulates that the pain-ters should illustrate the story as follows:

A high mountain, and Moses kneeling on the summit, holding the tablets; above are many clouds with much fire and angels sounding trumpets. Lower down the mountain, Moses appears again, breaking the tablets to pieces. At the bottom of the mountain are the Hebrews, eating and drinking and dancing, and in the midst of them a tall column on top of which is a golden calf. Aaron is standing apart by himself, grieving6.

In a few other details, the artist deviated from the Hermeneia's instruction. He inserted, under the caption Gospod' Savaoph (the Lord of Hosts), the figure of God entrusting the Tablets to Moses, and added one more pair of the unbroken Tablets in the hands of another figure of Moses shown next to Aaron at the foot of the mountain. The written explication (at the bottom of the painting) stressed the punishment of those who deified the Calf: "Some of them were swallowed by the earth, others were killed in the field" (cf. Exodus 32:2529)7. The image shows the slaughter of the sinful (under the right slope of Sinai). Under it, there are more figures within pits in the earth, while one of them is held captive in the underworld by a twin of the Golden Calf.

4 Elena I. Itkina informed me that holes made by pins or nails are discernible in the corners of many Old-Believer paper pictures in the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow. 5 Dionysius of Fourna's manual was composed in Greek ca. 173034 and then translated into many other languages, including Slavonic and Russian. See I. Bentchev: Die Tech-nologie in den griechischen und bulgarischen Malerbchern des 16.19. Jahrhunderts. Recklinghausen 2004, pp. 12229. 6 The "Painter's Manual" of Dionysius of Fourna. Torrance 1996, p. 21 no. 57. The

book is a translation into English of , St. Petersburg, Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library, Cod. Gr. 708. 7 The phrase in the fourth row (from the bottom) in Fig. 1 reads, " i

".

Kabbalistic Traces in a Russian Old-Believer Painting ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

15

Figure 1. "Illustration to the Book of Exodus", tempera and ink on paper, 52 72.5 cm. Northern Russia, second half of the nineteenth century. Moscow, The State Historical Museum.


16

Figure 2. Theodore Poulakis, Moses Receiving the Law", tempera on panel. Athens, Alexander Tsatsos Collection.

The Hermeneia's account of the Jews worshipping the Golden Calf echoes Augustine's accusing them of "receiving the Law carnally without perceiving that its earthly promises were figures of things spiritual8 The not numerous post-Byzantine images of the Sinaic revelation, which included two unbroken sets of the Tablets (one being received by Moses from God and another exposed to the people in the valley), conveyed the parable of the Jewish repudiation of Divine Testament. An example of the kind was created by Theodore Poulakis of Crete and Venice (162292), who painted the Jews covering their eyes or making gestures of protest towards the Tablets of the Law held by a Jesus-looking, haloed Moses (Fig. 2)9.

The "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" represents an antithesis to the Jewish worshipers of the Golden Calf, to whom Moses turns his back: on the

8 "Carnaliter quippe accipiendo legem et eius promissa terrena rerum caelestium figures

[]", Augustine: De civitate Dei 20:28; the translation is quoted after The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, vol. 2. Edinburgh 1871, p. 404. 9 N. B. Drandrakis: " " (The icons of Theodore Pou-lakis), , vol. 13, 1976, pp. 20526.


17

side opposite the scene of idolatry, the painter depicts the people revering the Commandments: three men bow towards the Tablets in Moses' hands, and two more praying figures rise from the pit in the foreground. The contraposition is reminiscent rather of the resurrection of the dead followed by salvation of the just, and punishment of the sinners. The people blessed by Moses and Aaron and adoring the Commandments obviously allude to the painter's Old Believer coreligionists. The eschatological and typological allusions are borne up by the sun and moon (in the left and right upper corners, respectively), traditional sym-bols in the depictions of the Crucifixion recalling the eclipse that accompanied Christ's agony (Matthew 27:45; Mark 13:24; Luke 23:44)10.

Figure 3. Lucas Cranach the Elder, "Allegory of Law and Grace", 1529. Tempera on panel, 82.2 118 cm. Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein.

The Western iconography dealing with the relation of the Mosaic Covenant to the redemption of man is traced back to the allegories representing the contra-diction between Mosaic Law and Christian Grace in John 1:17, which were intro-duced by Lucas Cranach the Elder for Lutheran propaganda around 1529. In

10 G. Schiller: Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2. London 1972, p. 109. For early Christian interpretations of this symbol, see also Th. F. Mathews, A. K. Sanjian: Armenian Gospel Iconography: The Tradition of the Glajor Gospel. Washington 1991, pp. 16063.


18

Cranach's Gotha version of "Allegory of Law and Grace" (Fig. 3), a tree dry on its left side and greening on the right separates between the visions of Divine judgement and grace.

Figure 4. Erhard Altdorfer, "Allegory of Law and Grace", De Biblie uth der uthlegginge Doctoris Martini Luthers. Lbeck: Ludowick Dietz, 1533, title page.


19

Appearing on the dead side of the tree, Moses promulgates the Commandments, but this Law fails to rescue a damned man from the devil and a skeleton personi-fying death, who expel him to Hell. On the opposite side, John the Baptist grants the damned salvation by leading him to crucified Christ. John's speech and gesti-culation without any reference to the book that he holds in his hand clearly distinguishes this from Moses' preoccupation with the text written (in a quasi-Hebrew script) on the Tablets. The dissimilar modes of conveying the Law and Gospel to people in Cranach's painting might reflect Luther's concept of the Jewish reading of the Commandments, which he postulated in his sermon "How Christians Should Regard Moses" in 1525. In Luther's opinion, meticulous obe-dience to the entire body of literally understood Mosaic Law remains binding only on the Jews, whereas for the Christians, it became "dead and gone." Luther thus summarized that Christians should follow the Old Law selectively so far as its Commandments agree with "the natural law" or may be accepted as Christo-logical prefiguration11. Luther's elaborated exposition of the Ten Commandments as articles of Christian faith became the opening chapter of his two Catechisms, Large and Small, both dating from 152912.

Bonnie Noble noted that Cranach's "Law and Grace" images do not simply distinguish between the Old and New Testaments, but are a visual interpretation of Luther's belief that "law alone will never make the salvation possible," although it "enables salvation by preparing the way for the apprehension of grace13. The idea of the final Christian salvation for all the nations is emphasized in Cranach's Prague version of "Law and Grace"14 and its remake by Erhard Altdorfer for the title page of Luther Bibles (Fig. 4). These images show an elderly Jew, purportedly the prophet Elijah15, joining John the Baptist: they both point at the Crucifix, offering thereby salvation in Christ to the naked damned. 11 M. Luther: "How Christians Should Regard Moses" in: Luther's Works: Word and Sa-crament I, vol. 35, trans. and ed. E. Theodore Bachmann. Philadelphia 1960, pp. 16174. 12 M. Luther: Der groe und der kleine Katechismus, eds. K. Aland, H. Kunst. Gttin-gen 1983. 13 B. Noble: Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation. Lanham 2009, pp. 36-37. On the Reformist approaches to the Bible, see also J. A. Stei-ger: "The Development of the Reformation Legacy: Hermeneutics and Interpretation of the Sacred Scripture in the Age of Orthodoxy" in: Hebrew Bible / Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2. From the Renaissance to the Enlightment, ed. M. Sb. Gttingen 2008, pp. 70421. 14 Lucas Cranach the Elder, "Allegory of Law and Grace", 1529. Tempera on panel, 72 88.5 cm. Prague, National Gallery, Sternberg Palace. See: B. Noble: Lucas Cranach the Elder..., pp. 3032, fig. 1.1. 15 John the Baptist is associated with the prophet Elijah in Gospels (Matthew 17:1113; John 1:1921).


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Moses appears now on Mount Sinai (shown in the upper left), receiving the Tablets from God's hands; the relocation expresses the valuation of Mosaic Law as not solely Jewish, but as a universal Divine revelation forerunning Christ's gospel. It is likely that Altdorfer pursued an even stronger emphasis on the con-tinuity between the Old and New Testaments, both included in the Lutheran Bible he illustrated, when he transferred the closed book almost hidden in the folds of John the Baptist's cloak in the Prague "Law and Grace" to the hands of the Jewish prophet. The book's bright edge stands out against the prophet's figure. The similarity of this round-topped, inclined edge to either Tablet of the Law in God's hands may evoke an association of this book with the Old Testament16.

The Lutherans claimed to revive genuine understanding of the Holy Scriptures, which was perverted by the mainstream Church; so, too, did the Old-Believer dissenters in Russia. Whether or not the painter of "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" saw "Law and Grace" images, which spread throughout cen-tral and eastern Europe17, he shared the representation of the Decalogue as a moral code that if disconnected from Judaism and understood typologically leads people to salvation in Christ.

The Russian painter would have been familiar with the Christological ex-position of the Decalogue in the Church-Slavonic version of the Orthodox Con-fession of Faith of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East (also called Small Catechism), a pre-schism source accepted by the Old Believers as autho-ritative and often referred to by the theologians of the Vyg community.18 The

16 For a comprehensive discussion of the Decalogue in Late Medieval to Early Modern Christian art, see V. Thum: Die Zehn Gebote fr die ungelehrten Leut': der Dekalog in der Graphik des spten Mittelalters und der frhen Neuzeit. Munich 2006. 17 See D. S. Ehresmann: "The Brazen Serpent: A Reformation Motive in the Works of Lukas Cranach the Elder and His Workshop", Marsyas vol. 13, 1966/67, pp. 3247; W. Scribner: For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Refor-mation. Cambridge 1981, pp. 21619; J. Harasimowicz: "Rola sztuki w religijnych i spoecznych konfliktach wieku Reformacji na lsku", Rocznik Historii Sztuki, vol. 18, 1990, p. 46. 18 The Confession's primary version was composed by the Kievan Metropolitan, Petro Mohyla (15971647), or under his direction, ca. 1640. Although being influenced by the Catholic and Reformist dogmata, the treatise critically responded to those. The Greek text of the Confession was purged of the perceptible Western influences and adopted by the Greco-Russian Synod of Jassy in 1643, and then signed by the Eastern Patriarchs. See Ph. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes, vol. 2, The Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations. New York 1919, p. 275. The Church Slavonic edition, entitled , was first published in Moscow in 1648/49 and then numerously reprinted. An eighteenth-century manuscript copy of the Small Catechism (alias the Orthodox Confession of Faith) was found in the Vyg


21

Confession's third chapter, "On the Love to God and Neighbor," contains the exposition of the Commandments as a universal ethical code. The text explicates:

Question: On which Commandments is love to God and neighbour based?

Response: On the Commandments of God, given to Moses on the Two Tablets. On the first Tablet, there are four of God's Commandments, which teach how we should love and revere our God the Lord. On the second Tablet, there are six of God's Commandments, which teach how we should love the neighbor as oursel-ves [cf. Matthew 22:39] and revere him []19.

The painter of the "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" preferred the traditional Eastern Orthodox iconography of five Commandments on each Tab-let, neglecting the division of the Commandments into the groups of four and six in the Orthodox Confession20. Each Commandment is designated by one Church-Slavonic character, as follows21:

hermitage's library; see E. M. Yukhimenko: "- - " (The collection of books and manuscripts of the Vygo-Leksa commune), , vol. 52, 2001, p. 484 no. 139. The Old Believers appreciated the Orthodox Confession despite their negative attitude to its reputed author, Petro Mohyla. See N. S. Gurianova: " " (The Vyg community and heritage of the Kievan Metropolia) in: , vol. 1. Novosibirsk 2009, pp. 24358. 19 The Church Slavonic text (in modern Russian transcription) reads:

. ? . . , , . , , [].

(Orthodox Confession of Faith), Moscow 1648/49, chapter 3, question 2. 20 The distribution of the four Commandments on the first Tablet and six on the second is likely a survival of Calvinist influence on Mohyla's Confession, see note 18 above and J. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1. London 1953, pp. 32526. The Ro-man Catholic Church and Luther accepted the Augustinian division of the Command-ments into three on the first Tablet and seven on the second. See also E. Nielsen: Die Zehn Gebote: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Skizze. Kopenhagen 1965, pp. 3233. 21 The first five of these ten letters are discernible on the five fragments of the broken Tablets in the painting's bottom center.


22

The characters compose the acronym of the First Commandment22, suggesting to those who are able to decipher this meaning to contemplate the entire Deca-logue derived from the belief in one God.

The distribution of the ten inscriptions on the tree is different. At a glance, they seem to have a circular layout: the two central medallions are surrounded by eight peripheral ones. In fact, the sequence of the Command-ments constitutes a different order: they begin in the uppermost medallion and then run in rows, from the left to right, as follows:

1

2 3 4

5 6 7

8 9

10

The writing of moral prescriptions within medallions, cartouches, or on the branches or roots of a plant image was common in Old-Believer didactic art, and this technique was used by other Russian folk painters, too. The inscriptions listed the maxims of "Spiritual Alphabet" and "Useful Advise,"23 twelve virtues "to be offered to God's Throne" (named the "Twelve Good Friends" of the faith-ful),24 moralities composing the "Tree of Reason,"25 or "seven deadly sins."26

22 " % , , " ("I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage", Exodus 20:2). 23 See examples in: E. I. Itkina: ..., pp. 104 and 187 nos. 33-34. 24 Ibid., pp. 87 and 18586 no. 31; 101 and 18687 no. 32, 113 and 195 nos. 4950, 249250 nos. 14243. 25 Ibid., pp. 103 and 18788 no. 35. 26 Ibid., pp. 87 and 19495 no. 48, 209 no. 71, 248 no. 139.


23

Figure 5. "Natural and Logical Tree", Ramon Lull, Liber de logica nova. Valncia 1512.


24

The tree with its trunk, extremities, and fruits offered the writers and ar-tists a spectacular structural template for the pictorial representation of series of principles or categories. The tree structure was often employed in this way in the European esoteric literature.

Figure 6. "Tree of the Kabbalah", engraving, Aix-en-Provence, 1735. Replica of "Tree of the Kabbalah", Philippes d'Aquin, Interprtation de l'arbre de la cabale, enrichy de sa figure tire des plus anciens autheurs hbrieux. Paris 1625. After Franois Secret, Les Kabbalistes chrtiens de la Renaissance. Paris 1964, fig. XV.


25

For example, the images of trees in the early-sixteenth-century printed editions of books by a Catalan mystic, Ramon Lull (ca. 1232ca. 1315; Fig. 5)27 and their later reprints combined a realistic rendering of branches, leaves, and flowers with the schematic arrangement of symbolic fruits. Four "trees of categories" surround the diagram of the sephirot composed by a French Christian kabbalist Philippes d'Aquin in 1625 (Fig. 6).

Although the Christians in northern Russia ever barely met Jews in their neighborhood, the assumption about certain kabbalistic knowledge among the na-tive Old Believers seems to be plausible in the light of archival records and histo-rical evidence. The lists of books from Vyg testify that the severe separatist ideology of the Old Believers did not suppress their deep interest in other reli-gious teachings. Apart from a very few books in foreign languages, the non-Christian-Orthodox literature was translated into Russian28. The corpus included Russian versions of Lull's Rhetorica Nova (copied in the first quarter of the eighteenth century) and Ars magna (copied in 1756)29. The Russian translators and readers of Western esoteric literature commonly referred to Lull as a "kabba-list," for his doctrine of the dignitates Dei descending to the sublunary world re-sembled the kabbalistic conception of the sephirot30. Further interest of the Old

27 The scheme of the "Arbor naturalis et logicalis" (Fig. 5) that illustrates Ramon Lull: Liber de logica nova. Valncia 1512, is based on the scala praedicamentalis, a three-columned chart created by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre (234ca. 305). See P. R. Blum: "Dio e gli indivi dui: L'Arbor Porphyriana nei secoli XVII e XVIII", Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, vol. 91, 1999, pp. 1849; J. J. E. Gracia: "Tree of Porphyry" in: A Companion to Metaphysics, eds. J. Kim, E. Sosa, G. S. Rosenkrantz. Malden 2009, pp. 60506. Numerous arboreal charts are found also in Ramon Lull's Arbor scientiae. Lyon 1515, a popularized version of his Ars magna. 28 For instance, there were a printed Bible in Hebrew and a manuscript of the Quran in Russian; see E. M. Yukhimenko: "- - ..." pp. 458, 474, no. 34. 29 A Russian translation of the Rhetorica Nova was copied by a scriber from the Vyg hermitage, and the library possessed a Russian abridged version of the Ars magna. See N. V. Ponyrko: " " (Rhetoric textbooks in Vyg), - , vol. 36. 1981, pp. 15455; E. M. : -- - " p. 472 no. 24. 30 V. P. Zubov: " XVIII . " (On the history of Russian rhetoric in the late 18th century: Russian Lullian literature and its destination), O , vol. 16, 1960, p. 291. See also A. Kh. Gorfunkel: " " (Lull's Ars magna and its readers) in: XVIII , vol. 5. oscow 1962, pp. 33648. On Lull and Jewish kabbalah, see M. Idel: "Ramon


26

believers in esoteric literature was fostered by the emergence of Freemason brotherhoods in late-eighteenth-century Russia. The Russian Freemasons studied the scriptures of European Christian kabbalists in their search for "perennial wisdom" that should regenerate the deteriorating spirituality of the Russian Church31. The esoteric literature permeated to the wider strata of townsfolk and peasants, and was also read by the Old Believers32 and other sectarians who sought spiritual and ritual alternatives to the official Orthodox Church33.

Indicative of the influence of the Western esoteric images on Old-Belie-ver popular art is the "Seal of the Wise King Solomon," a mid-nineteenth-cen-tury painting from north Russia (Fig. 7)34. The title relates to the tale of the ring with a magic seal for exorcising demons, which God presented to King Solo-mon. In medieval Europe, this legend circulated in Latin copies of the ancient apocryphal Testament of Solomon35. Illustrations in the later pseudo-Solomonic books usually depicted the seal as a multi-rayed or round shape containing ma-gic signs and Hebrew letters. Unlike those, the Russian "Seal of Solomon" is a Cyrillic-script copy of the ancient Roman "magic square" comprising the letters sator-arepo-tenet-opera-rotas, which are written in twenty-five boxes so that they combine in a palindrome that can be read in four directions36.

Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah: A Preliminary Observation", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 51. 1988, pp. 17074. 31 See K. Burmistrov: "Christian Orthodoxy and Jewish Kabbalah: Russian Mystics in the Search for Perennial Wisdom" in: Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others, eds. K. Von Stuckrad and O. Hammer. Leiden 2007, pp. 2554. 32 V. Vs. Ivanov: (Russia and Gnosis) in: 500 Years of Gnosis in Euro-pe: Exhibition of Printed Books and Manuscripts from the Gnostic Tradition, eds. C. Gilly and M. Afanasyeva. Amsterdam 1993, pp. 1213. 33 I thank Konstantin Burmistrov who kindly shared with me, in email correspondence, his information about numerous drawings of the sephirotic tree in the Masonic manu-scripts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and about another such manuscript with the schemes of sephirot that was copied by a sectarian imprisoned in the Solovetsky Islands in the Russian north in the 1850s. 34 E. I. Itkina: ..., p. 193 no. 46. 35 The treatise was written in Greek, probably in Babylonia or Egypt, sometime between the second and fifth centuries CE. On this text and its late influences, see S. I. Johnston: "The Testament of Solomon from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance" in: Metamor-phosis of Magic from the Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, eds. J. N. Brem-mer, J. R. Veenstra. Leuven 2002, pp. 3549. 36 The following is only a selection of the vast literature on the subject: D. Fishwick: "On the Origin of the Rotas-Sator Square", The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 57 no. 1. 1964, pp. 3953; J. Gwyn Griffiths: " 'Arepo' in the Magic 'Sator Square' ", The Classical Review, n. s. vol. 21, no. 1. 1971, pp. 68; W. O. Moeller: The Mithraic


27

Figure 7. "Seal of the Wise King Solomon", tempera and ink on paper, 44.7 35.8 cm. Northern Russia, mid-nineteenth century. Moscow, The State Historical Museum. After starover-pomorec.com/ikons/lubok.html (accessed February 26, 2012).

Origin and Meanings of the Rotas-Sator Square. Leiden 1973; R. Camilleri: Il quadrato magico: Un mistero che dura da duemila anni. Milan 1999.


28

The magic sator square, which often was imaginatively interpreted as a Christian anagram37, was inscribed on Christian amulets in Russia as well as elsewhere in Europe38, except for the Jewish kabbalistic writings and Jewish amulets39. The sator square is associated with the Seal of Solomon in the Magical Treatise of Solomon, a grimoire that first appeared in the fourteenth or fifteenth century in Greek, was then translated into Latin as Clavicula Salomonis, and in the following centuries circulated widely in Europe also in Italian, German, French, and English translations. Although the book was translated into Hebrew only later, its Latin and other Latin-script editions contained figures with Hebrew inscriptions, sometimes garbled. Versions of the text claimed that it was originally written by King Solomon in Hebrew and then translated into Latin by rabbis. In many Clavicula Salomonis seventeenth-century manuscripts, the sator square in Hebrew, surrounded by a Hebrew verse from a Solomonic psalm (Psalms 72:8), designates a "Pentacle of Saturn" (Fig. 8), one of Solomon's magic figures40.

The Old-Believer painting of the Seal of Solomon (Fig. 7) a likeness of the magic "pentacle" in the Clavicula Salomonis (Fig. 8) transforms the mea-ning of the sator text into an acronym, each of whose letters reiterates the initial letter of a sentence written within one of the twenty-five medallions. These short phrases refer to the biblical stories of Creation, Fall, and human sins, as well to the Last Judgment and Christian salvation. The painting assimilates the sator text, meaningless for the Russian reader, by its adjustment to the literary form and didactic spirit of Slavonic acrostic hymns known as "Alphabet Prayers."41

37 They rearrange the letters of the palindrome to form an anagram reading "Pater Noster" twice, written in cruciform, with the addition of the letters A and O that stand for the Greek letters alpha and omega indicating Christ. See D. Fishwick: "An Early Christian Cryptogram?" Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report, vol. 26. 1959, pp. 2941. 38 W. F. Ryan: The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divina-tion in Russia. University Park 1999, pp. 201, 30203. See also D. C. Skemer: Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. University Park 2006, pp. 76 n. 1, 11617, 120, 134, 167, 181, 23839, 244. 39 The sator formula is absent from the similar magic word squares known to us that were composed by Jews. See Th. Schrire: Hebrew Amulets: Their Decipherment and Interpretation. London 1966, pp. 6468. 40 The manuscripts in the British Library were studied by Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, who published his English translation of Clavicula Salomonis as The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis). London 1888. The sources he used for his publication and illustrations are listed in ibid., pp. VIIIX. See also O. Davies: Grimoi-res: A History of Magic Books. New York 2009, pp. 18082. 41 Cf. Ryan: The Bathhouse at Midnight..., p. 293. On the acrostic hymnology, see K. M. Kuev: (Alphabet prayer in Slavic literature). Sofia 1974.


29

Figure 8. "Pentacle of Saturn", Clavicula Salomonis, seventeenth century. After The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis). London 1888, pl. II fig. 12.

It is most likely that this expansion of the sator formula was modeled on earlier Russian printed luboks such as "Seal of the Wise King Solomon" (Fig. 9),42 where almost the same phrases serve as the captions for the illustrations. In contrast to the lubok, the painted version of the "Seal of Solomon" demonstrates a unified, organic composition of the twenty-five sentences shaped as fruits of a flowering plant, which are arranged in two concentric circles around the "seal" surmounted by a figure of Solomon.

In the Russian folk paintings, the arrangement of moralizing "fruits" in accordance with the numerical sequence (twelve "friends," seven vices, or the like), alphabet order, or acrostic facilitated the didactic and mnemonic function of the pictorial tables. This is also true for the "Illustration to the Book of Exodus," where the Decalogue is designated by the acronym of the First Commandment on the Tablets, while the medallions on the tree contain the full text of the Commandments, with their number and initial letter written in red ink. In contrast to the quasi-Hebrew in Figs 23 and a mere scribbling as in Fig. 4, the Old Believer painter wrote on the Tablets using the script with which his audience was well acquainted. The numerical order and highlighted initial

42 D. Rovinsky: i (Russian folk pictures), vol. 1. St. Peters-burg 1900, cols. 17476.


30

letters, central location and great size of the fruit-like shaped Ten Commandments made the "Illustration" a convenient manual for learning the Decalogue.

Figure 9. "Seal of the Wise King Solomon", engraving (lubok). Russia, late eighteenth or nineteenth century. After Dmitry Rovinsky, i (Russian folk pictures), vol. 1. St. Petersburg 1900, col. 176 fig. 172.


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Over and above the formal advantage, the images of fruitful trees implied the allegories of Christian faith and Christ's reward to the faithful in the New Testament. The many fruits growing from one plant were associated with multi-ple moral norms stemming from one Divine source. As early as the twelfth century, the parable of the "fruits of the Spirit" as opposed to the "works of the flesh" in Galatians 5:1625 inspired the depictions of the "tree of virtues" versus the "tree of vices" in Western Christian art43. The explication of the Decalogue in the Orthodox Confession of Faith refers to another parabolic mention of fruits in the New Testament:

Question: What does happen when one obeys God's Commandments?

Response: The obedience to the Commandments is a fruit of the Christian Faith, according to the Savior's teaching: "You shall know them by their fruits" [Matthew 7:16, 20]44.

The text implies that, historically, obedience to the Decalogue is necessary for Christian salvation; metaphorically, the Commandments are fruits; and typolo-gically, Moses at Mount Sinai prefigures Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 57)45. The Confession, a book popular among the Old Believers, thereby provides one clue for these several essential traits of the image of a tree yielding the fruit of the Commandments.

The framing of the medallions with the Commandments suggests still another array: a double frame enclosing each of the circles on the major axis of the tree's trunk, distinguishing them from the other circles within single frames:

43 See A. Katzenellenbogen: Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art. New York 1964, pp. 6566. 44 . , ?

. , : .

, chapter 3, question 4. 45 On the theological and historical aspects of this parallel, see J. Danilou: From Sha-dows to Reality: Studies in Biblical Typology of the Fathers. London 1960, pp. 15960; D. Lioy: The Decalogue in the Sermon on the Mount. New York 2004.


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Overriding the numerical order of the Commandments, the emphasized frames redistribute the Decalogue into groups, which seem to be random46. It is likely that the emphasis pursued the very three-columned scheme comprised of four circles in the center and three circles in each lateral column, which is reminis-cent of a kabbalistic diagram of the sephirot, attributes of God's manifestation in His creation (e.g., Fig. 6). It is also noticeable that the stellated contours of fo-liage around the medallions evoke in the beholder a sense that the Command-ments are radiating substances.

In contrast to the self-contained plant-like charts of the virtues and vices, the tree of the Commandments is embedded into the depiction of the Sinaic theophany, suggesting the idea of the descent of the Law from God in Heaven to the people on earth. The "Illustration to the Book of Exodus" shows the Commandments on the Tablets passing from God to Moses, and seemingly also to the books found on Mount Sinai: an open one at top center and another, closed, book to its left. The beholder may speculate whether the contents of the open book are revealed by God through Moses, or while bypassing him, and whether the closed book like such books in the Lutheran images (Figs 34) is the Old Testament misunderstood by the Jews or, perhaps, a book of esoteric wisdom or something else. Touching the clouds of empyrean with its upper edge, the open book surmounts the cluster of the Commandments which des-cend along the tree and reappear under its trunk, on the Tablets held by Moses.

The ten sephirot were first described as a tree and juxtaposed with the Ten Commandments in the earliest disseminated kabbalistic treatise, Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Brilliance)47 set down in writing for the first time in Provence

46 The division of the Commandments into three groups the 2nd, 5th, and 8th (on the left); 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th (in the center); and 3rd, 6th and 9th (on the right) does not match any theory known to me. 47The book relates: "What is this tree that you mentioned? He said: It represents the Powers of the Blessed Holy One, one above the other", "the Ten Sephiroth with which heaven and earth were sealed [] parallel the Ten Commandments"; quoted after the English transl-ation by A. Kaplan in The Bahir. Northvale 1979, pp. 45 no. 119, 47 no. 124.


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ca. 1176, that highly influenced the later kabbalistic teachings and was known to European scholars in several Latin translations since the late fifteenth century48. The diagrams of the ten sephirot became available to a wider Euro-pean audience after they were printed in books of Christian kabbalists in the seventeenth century. Philippes d'Aquin (15781650), a converted Jew, created his ornate depiction of the three-columned tree of sephirot for Interprtation de l'arbre de la cabale published in Paris in 1625 (Fig. 6) aiming at exposition of the "ancient rabbinical" wisdom of the kabbalistic tree to the Christians49. A simplified version of d'Aquin's illustration was printed nearly three decades later in Rome, in Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus50. The Tablets shown in the midst of their sephirotic trees might suggest the interrelation of the Commandments and the sephirot even to the viewer unaware of the existence of this association in Jewish kabbalah.

The Christian esoteric literature detached the kabbalah from Judaism, which the Old Believers considered to be a satanic faith and the cause of Niko-nian reforms51. In the minds of dissenters, the mystical teachings seemed to re-veal the pristine Christian meanings of the Old Testament. For Old Beleivers, the claim for true apprehension and proper regard of the remote past entailed the polemics against the reformed Russian Church that, as the Jews before it, cor-rupted Divine will.

48 See a review of these translations in: The Book of Bahir: Flavius Mithridates Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, ed. by S. Campanini. Turin 2005, pp. 57122. 49 D'Aquin defined the Law in historical terms, quoting Deuteronomy 33:4 in Hebrew: "Moses commanded us a law, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob". On d'Aquin's dedication of this kabbalistic image to the Cardinal of Sourdis, see F. Secret: Les Kabbalistes chrtiens de la Renaissance. Paris 1964, pp. 33839, 35455 n. 78. 50 A. Kircher: Oedipus Aegyptiacus hoc est Universalis hieroglyphicae veterum doct-rina temporum iniuria abolitae instauration. Rome 1653, facing p. 288. In his drawing of the sephirot, Kircher described the Tablets typologically: "Lex Moysis umbra legis aeternae" (The Law of Moses is a shadow of the Eternal Law). 51 E. g., around 1800, an anonymous Old-Believer author condemned the reformed ritu-als in the Russian Church as "Jewish Law" and the adherent of Nikon's reform, Peter the Great, as a "Jewish king" who is also a false Messiah and Antichrist; see: "C A" (Collection from the Holy Scriptures about Anti-christ) in: I XVIII . . St. Petersburg 2006, pp. 30619. See also N. S. Gurianova: " - XIX . ' I ' " (Nineteenth-century Old-Believer treatises "About Peter I the Antichrist") in: . 1980, pp. 13653.


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The adoption of the sephirotic diagram greatly enriched the exegetic and didactic significances of the "Illustration to the Book of Exodus." The role of conducting the emanation of Divine Presence from the ultimate celestial source down to the material world, given in the kabbalah to the ten sephirot, was re-ascribed here to the three-columned structure of the Ten Commandments channeling the Divine Testament from the celestial realm to the mundane world. The definition of the entity of the Commandments as a tree recalled the biblical archetype of the Tree of Life and Christian parables of good trees yiel-ding fruits of virtues. The tree-shaped layout relegated the Decalogue to the series of diagrams of moral dogmas in the paintings exhibited by the Old Belie-vers in their private venues as a means of unceasing edification for the sake of ideological cohesiveness of this conservative sectarian community

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