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Flügelaltar in Herzform
Conventional wisdom holds that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is an artifact of the theological upheaval that reshaped Christendom framed by Martin Luther (1483–1546) nailing 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517, triggering the Reformation, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, marking the end of the Counter-Reformation. Just as these momentous religious movements had their roots in the first stirrings of European culture following the fall of the Roman Empire, so too the iconography of the Sacred Heart of Jesus grew over the same time and out of the same soil. By one count the word heart appears 953 times in the Bible. Only one of these, however, explicitly refers to Jesus’ heart: Matthew 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” In the writings of early Church Fathers Saint Justin Martyr (d. 165), Saint Iraneous of Lyon (d. 202), Saint Augustine (354–430), and Paulinus of Mola (351–431) there are mentions of Jesus' heart, but only in passing. Jesus’ heart does become prominently featured in popular treatises on the Passion of Christ, starting in the 6th century. This attention, verging on obsession, to Jesus’ suffering reached new heights in the immensely influential Vita Mystica, now ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) in which the bloodied Jesus is hoisted on to the gibbet, his arms and whole body forcibly stretched out with such distorting violence that all the joints of his body can be counted, and his hands, feet, side, and heart pierced by the wicked. These descriptions were meant to stimulate an emotional response in the reader and draw attention to the humanity of Jesus. These early texts were codified in the 12th century Glossa ordiaria, the source for many subsequent Passion narratives, which became increasingly graphic in their accounts of the humiliation and pain inflicted on Jesus. While early Christianity had previously emphasized Jesus’ divinity, now emphasis was on Jesus as a man and his crucifixion and resurrection as the central act of human history. The Five Wounds of Christ was a common visual correlative to the Passion story. This iconography, found in manuscript miniatures and woodcuts dating to as early as the 14th century, was the first to depict the heart of Jesus, thought not the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was to come later. While today veneration of the heart of Jesus is almost entirely exclusive to the Catholic confession, during the Reformation it was current among Protestants also. There are many 16th and 17th century Lutheran songs, prayers, and popular devotionals in which Jesus’ heart is an object of piety. During this time, picturization by both Catholic and Protestant artists of the heart of Jesus took on new and imaginative interpretations. The heart shaped painting shown here is the central panel of a triptych by the Protestant painter Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586), whose father, the better known Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1533), was a close friend of Martin Luther.
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