VII. THE LION, DIRECT EMBLEM OF THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
Here is the King of kings:
The lion represents the
Son of Saint Mary,
King of all peoples,
Without any possible doubt. (*1)
The commentators of the Sacred Books agree in regarding as applying to Jesus Christ what concerns Judah in the prophecy of Jacob to his sons: "Judah is like a young lion; my son has risen from the slaughter, he has bent his knees, he has lain down like a lion, like a lioness, who then will dare to make him rise?" (*2)
Saint Ambrose, for his part, takes from Deuteronomy, and under the figure of the lion, another image of Christ. Moses says there of the sons of the patriarch Gad: "Gad was filled with blessing; he rested like a lion that has seized the arm and the head of its prey...(*3)" And the holy bishop of Milan regards this saying as making of the tribe of Gad an excellent figure of the Savior, victorious over Satan, and who, satisfied with his earthly work, rests in the triumph of heaven (*4).
But the main text, this one formal, which assimilates Christ to the lion is provided to us by the vision of Saint John described in his Apocalypse: On the throne which a rainbow surrounded "like an emerald vision", and before which were bowed the four animals with wings quivering with flame and the twenty-four elders crowned with gold, there appeared the mysterious Book, closed with seven seals. And the Apostle wept because no one in heaven was judged worthy to break the seals of the Book. But one of the elders said to him: "Do not weep; here is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, who has obtained by his victory to open the Book, and to remove its seals... And I saw: and behold in the midst of the throne and the four animals, and in the midst of the elders, a lamb standing and as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God..." (*5)
Here then is the victorious Christ shown as a lamb, because he is "meek and humble of heart," as he himself said, and as a lion, because he possesses, in his fullness, the divine and victorious strength.
Lion and lamb together, thus will acclaim the iconography and the mystical emblematic of all Christian ages:
The 15th century Missal of the former Benedictine abbey of Nouaillé, near Poitiers, salutes the fertile Virgin in the Prose of the Annunciation:
You, small and great,
The Lion and the Lamb,
Have become the temple
Of the Savior Christ
And later Saint Francis de Sales would write:
"It is the truth that the mystical bees make their most excellent honey in the wounds of this Lion of the tribe of Judah, slaughtered, torn to pieces and torn on Mount Calvary, and the children of the Cross glory in their admirable problem that the world does not understand." (*6)
Behold the Lion of the tribe of Juda! This acclamation will be one of the most repeated sacred words in Christian symbolism and hermeticism; and the faith, the confidence of the people in the virtue of holy words, will even attach to it a power of special protection by using it as a sort of formula of exorcism or pious talisman.
Thus an amulet, probably of Gnostic origin and therefore made in the first Christian centuries, represents the owl, or more precisely the owl, taken, in this circumstance, as a certain image of Satan, around which unfold the word Dominus surrounded by seven stars, and the following inscription: "Bicit te leo de tribu Juda radis David" (sic). On the reverse, these words: "Jesu Xpistus ligavit te bratius Dei, et sigillus Salo-monix abis notturna non babas ad anima pura est super quis vis sis" (sic). Which should be translated:
"The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered you. Jesus Christ, the arm of God, has bound you, and the seal of Solomon. Night bird! May you never reach the pure soul, nor rule over it, whoever you are!" (*7)
Elsewhere, a magic nail from the same period bears these words:
Leo of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, won. Solomon † David son of Jesse. (*8)
These conjuration formulas leave no room for doubt; it is indeed the power of Christ, lion of Judah, which is opposed to that of Satan. (And to that of the other evil powers: "Whoever you are!" cries the text to the infernal bird.) It is He also, very likely, who appears in the center of a Christian lamp from Carthage reproduced opposite from Father Delattre (*9). (Fig. X). Likewise on the bell tower of Saint-Front de Périgueux, where the presence of a lion between two rows of griffins may well hieroglyphically represent the descent of Jesus into Hell (*10).
The Book of Kells, one of the most remarkable paleographic documents of Ireland, contains a miniature where the Lion-Christ appears in the center of four motifs which are very explicit about his divine nature at the bottom, the Bull and the Eagle of Saint Luke and Saint John; at the top, in place of the Winged Man of Saint Matthew and the Lion of Saint Mark, the miniaturist painted two flabella (*11). The central lion is therefore Christ in the middle of the evangelical animals. (Fig. XI).
Another example, even more certain, if possible. The old Romanesque portal of the church of Perros-Guirec, in Brittany, is decorated with a group of crude workmanship representing the Trinity; the Father is represented by an old man, the Son by a lion, the Holy Spirit by a dove (*12), (Fig. XII).
The lion is also the hieroglyph of the Savior when he is shown to us fighting the serpent, the dragon or some other ill-famed beast, such as, for example, the lion cited by Martigny who holds a porcupine in his claws (*13), or elsewhere, a human monster. It is the eternal combat of Christ against hell; this interpretation imposes itself too much for it to be necessary to insist.
This is why, especially before the 13th century, Christian artists often surrounded the head of the lion, like that of Jesus Christ, with a cruciform halo (*14). Didron cites two examples of this (*15); we also see the Lion thus haloed, near the Lamb, in the Bible of Charles the Bald, 19th century.
VIII. THE LION, EMBLEM OF THE DIVINE WORD
Mystical writers have quite naturally seen in the roar of the lion the image of the powerful word of Christ, of the Word-Doctor and of his unparalleled force of expansion: The formidable voice which resounds over the immense expanses of the deserts can in fact serve as an image of that which, carrying to the infinite ends of space, has gone, beyond the nebulae, to command movement, order and life.
Had not Hosea predicted this unequalled voice: "They will march after Yahweh; He will roar like a lion, and when they hear his roar, his sons will come trembling from the West (*16)." And Joel, in turn: "From Zion, Yahweh will roar" (*17)
Later, the Latin liturgy will use the same terms when speaking of the Savior: De Sion roaret, et de Jerusalem dabit vocem suam. “He will roar from the midst of Zion, and from Jerusalem his voice will resound (*18).)
Passed down from century to century, this word still resounds daily throughout the world through the teaching of the Church falling from the top of Christian pulpits: This is perhaps why, in our western regions at least, preaching pulpits are often carried by lions; in Chasseignes, near Londun (Vienne), and in this very town, at the church of Martray; these pulpits, dating from the 15th century and the following century, made in the form of stone cups, rest their feet on seated lions.
The irradiation which emanates from the stars or from some other light produced by human industry, has always been taken also for the emblem of the radiation of the divine Logos, of the Word of God. Now, the lion, well before our era, has always been put in relation with the Sun and Light. (Fig. XIII and XIV). We have seen its role in the conceptions of the cult of Mithras, the Sol invictus. Among the Greeks, the lion's mane, in representations of the Sun with a leonine face, was an emblem of solar radiation. On vases, jewelry, in all kinds of art objects from the hands of Greek artists, it often appears with the swan and other solar emblems, a double attribute sometimes explained by the nearby image of Apollo (*19). On the city gates of Mycenae, two large stone lions guarded the pyreus, a column at the top of which burned the sacred fire (*20). And among the Egyptians the lion of the sky was covered with a decoration of stars like a long cloak. (Fig. XV).
Heirs to these age-old traditions which linked, which almost related, the Sun and the lion, the hermeticists of the Middle Ages sometimes represented the lion by the astrological sign of the Sun provided with a lion's tail (*21). (Fig. XVI).
By a simple transposition of which they were accustomed, the Christian symbolists therefore placed the solar lion, with the pyrophoric eagle and the ram, with the Sun itself, with the fire, the lamp, the candle, to make it also the allegorical image of the blessed word, universal source of light and truth which are one (*22). And this adaptation was made early, although the lion's share was not rich in the Christian art of the first centuries of the Church.
Footnotes:
*1. Anglo-Norman bestiary of Philip of Taun, 12th century.
*2. Genesis, XLIX, 9.
*3. Deuteronomy, XXXIII, 20.
*4. Cf. Saint AMBROISE, De benedict. Patr. C. VIII.
*5. Saint JEAN, Apocalypse. V, 5.
*6. Saint Francis DE SALES, Treatise on the Love of God. Published in 1617, p. 1078.
*7. Cf. Dom LECLERCO, Dictionary of Christian Archaeology. T. III, vol. I, col. 1467.
*8. Ibid. T. I, v. 11, col. 1837.
*9. Revue de l'Art chrétien, ann. 1890, p. 137.
*10. Cf. F. DE VERNEILH, On Byzantine Influences, in Annales Archéologiques, July-August 1854, P. 235.
*11. Review of Christian Art, year 1883, P. 493.
*12. Document kindly provided by Mr. Genty.
*13. MARTIGNY, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, p. 369, 2 col.
*14. Cf. Mgr CROSNIER, Christian Iconography, p. 67.
*15. DIDRON, Christian Iconography, P. 349.
*16. HOSEA, Prophecy, XI, 10.
*17. Joe, Prophecy, III, 16.
*18. Poitevin Breviary (off. of the 1st Sun of Advent. 2nd Ant. of Vespers.)
*19. Cf. GLOTZ, in Dictionary of Antiquities, by Saglio v. Gorgones p. 1617.
*20. Cf. Ch. LENORMANT, Ancient fabrics from Le Mans and Chinon, in Archaeological Miscellany. Vol. III, P. 118.
*21. Cf. G. BOUCHET, Human Cosmogony, p. 40.
*22. Cf. LEFÉBURE, The Royal Hypogea of Thebes, in Annals of the Guimet Museum. Vol. IX (1886), Pl. XXX.