Symbol and Symbolism

SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM. - From αὐv = "with, together" and βάδω = "I throw," with the meaning of "putting together," bringing objects and ideas close together. Leaving aside, since they are of no interest here, the attribution of the term symbol to those objects whose parts, first separate or broken and then reunited, served as a mark of recognition; and to those other objects that served as a token of entry into a place, the term symbol is used above all in two meanings: 1) that of a formula or doctrinal profession, which unites the adherents of one and the same faith; as are above all the symbols or regulae fidei, the distinctive mark of the faithful belonging to the Catholic Church (and for this see SYMBOLS OF THE FAITH); 2) that of something sensible, an object or an action, having a relation of meaning with respect to a spiritual object, by virtue of a certain resemblance brought out by means of an intellectual comparison, and it is of this that we intend to speak here. Symbolism, therefore, means the tendency to represent ideas by way of symbols, and also the science that studies symbols and their value.

I. SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

The symbol can be realistic when, as happens in the primitive mentality, it sees behind material things (depicted, represented through action, etc.) a very close relation between the representative and the thing to which the representation refers; all the rites of imitative magic (v.) are fundamentally symbolic rites. This realistic value remains even when the culture rises from primitive to more complex conceptions, as in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic mysteries, in which the initiatory rite not only symbolizes but also effects (vision, sacred meal, touching) the sacred union between the adept and the god of the mystery.

The realistic symbol can be suggested by intellectual congruity or by conventional motives; thus the swastika, originally a solar symbol, became during the German National Socialist delirium a symbol of Aryanism; the crescent moon has become, for reasons that are not known, the symbol of Islam; and above all the cross is the symbol of Christianity.

In order for the symbol to have a unifying efficacy it must be intelligible, that is, intuitively revealing of the religious truth symbolized, but not too intellectualistic, otherwise it would lose its mystical efficacy, nor too minutely adherent to the thing symbolized, on pain of not being grasped or easily recalled to memory. For smaller groupings, proper to groups of initiates, the symbol can be more complicated and mysterious because in this case it serves as a token of recognition for the adepts alone.

The reality of the religious symbol, indispensable for effecting the mystical life in the individual and in the group, tends to assume a more spiritual value. Thus it happens that in the supreme phases of mysticism the worshipper dispenses with sacred images, consecrated places, ceremonies, and concentrates in a meditation made in recollected silence.

The symbol, being a synthesis of the beliefs and religious experiences of the social body, follows the fortunes of these and therefore either dissolves or volatilizes when the religious schemas crumble, or else crystallizes when the group, by reason of historical and ethnic contrast, closes itself to external influences and exchanges. Since law regulates and consecrates social relations with men, the symbol, under its various aspects of sign, gesture, formula, has in law a use all the more extensive the more primitive it is.

Thus the breaking of a scroll in Greece, of a stick or stipula in Rome, whose two parts remain in the hands of the contracting parties or of the witnesses, symbolized the stipulation of a contract; thus all the juridical formulas accompanied by gestures relating to various parts of the human body: the head in the case of adoption and inauguration; the lobe of the ear (considered the seat of memory) in mancipations, inheritances, testimonies (antestatio); the hand as symbol of power (in manum convenire, in manu esse, manumittere, manus conserere, manus inicere, manum opponere); the foot as symbol of possession, especially of immovables. In medieval law the ceremonies of adoption and investiture were all characterized by a symbolic ceremony: the cutting of a lock of hair (tonsure) for those who enrolled in the service of the Church; the girding of a sword for elected knights; the delivery of the chalice or the pastoral staff for the investiture of an ecclesiastical fief; of a clod of earth for that of a civil one, etc.

Nicola Turchi

II. SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM IN SACRED SCRIPTURE

The term occurs in its etymological sense in the biblical version of the Septuagint and in the Vulgate ("dantes symbola") of Prov. 23, 20-21, to indicate the portion that the diners "put together" for the common meal.

In biblical hermeneutics or interpretation (v.), however, a thing (image, action, vision, etc.) signified by the biblical words, done deliberately and solely to signify another analogous or connected thing, is customarily considered a symbol. The biblical symbol, thus described, is distinguished from the biblical type (v.), which is also a signifying thing, but is not made deliberately and solely to signify (e.g., Melchizedek as a type of Christ). The typical sense is normally not known by the human author of the Bible, whereas the symbolic sense is.

The symbol must be distinguished from metaphor and from the other rhetorical figures of words. In fact, in the description of the symbol the biblical words are used in their proper literal sense, whereas in metaphor (or in allegory, which is a continued metaphor) and in the other rhetorical figures, the terms are used in a transferred literal sense. Parables and fables too can be considered literary symbols; they are stories invented for the purpose of signifying higher realities. In the biblical prophetic books and in the Apocalypse there are many symbolic visions, symbolic actions, symbolic numbers, etc. Symbolic actions are also found in several historical books, e.g., those performed by Samuel (1 Sam. 11, 5-7), by Jonathan (ibid. 20, 20-22), by the prophet Ahijah of Shiloh (who, by dividing his cloak into twelve parts, symbolized the division of Solomon's Kingdom: 1 Kings 11, 29-39), by a son of the prophets (ibid. 20, 35-43), by the false prophet Zedekiah (ibid. 22, 11), by Elisha (2 Kings 14-19), by Nehemiah (Neh. 5, 12-13). In the New Testament, symbols connected with water may be considered to be the Baptism of John the Baptist (a sign of penance), that of Jesus (an efficacious sign of Grace), the ablutions the many [washings] of the Pharisees (to signify legal purity), Pilate's washing of his hands (symbol of innocence), etc. The symbolic action of Agabus (v.), who binds his own hands and feet with Paul's belt, foretells his imprisonment (Acts 21:10-13).

The frequent use of symbolic actions on the part of the Hebrews gives grounds for holding that certain strange actions of Isaiah (ch. 20), of Jeremiah (ch. 19) and especially of Ezekiel (v.) and of Hosea (v.) were truly performed. It may nevertheless be granted that some of these actions were performed only in vision, or were merely described as didactic parables. Exegetes debate whether certain biblical narratives, especially those of the first chapters of Genesis, of the books of Jonah, of Tobit, etc., are to be interpreted, at least in part, as s.

Pietro De Ambroggi

III. SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM AND SYMBOLISM IN THEOLOGY

1. Notions

Since the symbol is for the human spirit the most natural means of understanding and expressing spiritual realities, and everything that is invisible and spiritual manifests itself through sensible realities, it also has notable importance for the knowledge and expression of religious realities, which are manifested to man only by starting from sensible realities and through them (cf. Rom. 1:20). The heavens declare the glory of God, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field awaken in the soul the idea of divine Providence (cf. Ps. 18:1 or Mt. 6:26-30). This is not a matter here of a simple conceptual and logical inference, but of a perception of a poetic kind.

Symbolism has sometimes been expressed with Platonic terms (e.g., in Origen); it rests, however, upon a metaphysical reality, the analogy between the different degrees of being, on which the whole philosophy of the sign is founded (cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 60, a. 2 and 3).

The Bible brings a new enrichment to the notion of symbolism set forth above; not only is it known that it is connatural to man to attain, by means of sensible things, the knowledge of intelligible realities (St. Thomas, loc. cit.), but also that creatures bear impressed upon them the sign and the vestige of the creator, and that man, in particular, was created "in his image and likeness" (Gen. 1:26). Therefore human realities are naturally suited to signify divine realities. For this reason human language can express the Divine Revelation in Scripture. And when "the Word was made flesh," there came about the sensible manifestation (epiphania, theophania) of the mystery of God. He himself is the mystery of God (Col. 2:2), that is, the manifestation of God, through the sensible veil of the nature assumed, which hides and unveils it at the same time. The Church and the Sacraments, which are the prolongation of the humanity of Jesus, Christian worship, the liturgy are so many manifestations of this symbolism: the Christian community too rests upon a heap of symbols deriving from the essential dogmas of creation, of the Revelation of the word of God, of the Incarnation and of the Redemption really accomplished.

Certainly symbolism can have its dangers; it can drive a primitive religious mentality to identify the symbol with the reality (magic, idolatry) or, on the contrary, it can suggest to a rationalist spirit the idea of regarding it as a simple allegory or an empty sign. Such dangers, however, must not cause one to fail to recognize the importance of such a way of expressing religious realities, which penetrates even into the very mystery of the Incarnation. If the Word of God manifests itself to man through the humanity assumed, its properties and activities (which could be called symbols), and if man, in his turn, naturally makes use of symbols to express the knowledge of what he has learned from God, a theology (θεολογία, discourse of God, treatise on God) can well be constructed on the foundation of such symbols. Alongside a theology of a logical and conceptual nature, the Church has known a symbolic theology (theological symbolism), whose history must be traced.

2. Historical development

It is not difficult to discover traces of theological symbolism in the history of Christian thought; St. Ignatius of Antioch sees in the bishop and in the visible hierarchy the image (τύπος) of God and of the invisible hierarchy (Magn., 6, 1; Trall., 3, 1). But such symbolism developed especially at Alexandria, where the Neoplatonic influence and the "spiritual" exegesis of Scripture created a favorable environment for it. Clement devoted many pages to what he calls the symbolic genre συμβολικόν εἶδος (Strom., 2, 1, 1-2 ff.; CB, II, 113 ff.). There one finds both poetic or biblical allegory and religious symbolism properly so called. To know God who is transcendent, two paths are possible for the spirit of man: negation (negative theology, cf. e.g., Strom., 5, 12, 81-82; CB II, 380) and analogy, which gives rise to symbolism. Visible things have a spiritual sense and signify invisible things; the world, in its totality, is nothing but a religious language, founded on an ontological resemblance, more precisely on an exemplarism: the spiritual world is the archetype, the sensible world is the image of that model (Strom., 5, 14, 93; CB, II, 387). Clement was the first to outline a theory of religious symbolism: he discovered above all its psychological and pedagogical usefulness (Strom., 5, 46, 9-56-57; CB, II 357, 364) and made wide use of it in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. However, he employed it very little as an instrument of a theology. If he treated at length of the mysteries, which cannot be known except mystically (Strom., 1, 1, 13; CB, II, 10), this happened more out of literary reminiscence of the Eleusinian or Dionysian mysteries than for the purpose of a theological elaboration. In particular, his sacramental theology, in which theological symbolism has its greater development, is relatively poor. In Origen, on the other hand, who is the first to make a complete and strongly elaborated theological synthesis, symbolism was employed in a far more systematic manner. Not only is his theory of the senses of Scripture imposed by the symbolism of human psychology (Scripture has three senses, as man is composed of body, soul, and spirit), but his theology is constructed in every particular on the notion of symbol (μυστήριον): "In sacramentis fiunt cuncta quae fiunt" (In Gen. hom., 9, 1: PG 12, 211). The sensible world is made in the image of the intelligible world (In Levit. hom., 5, 1: ibid., 447), the events of the history of Israel are the image of the soul on its way toward perfection (In Num. hom., 27: ibid. 780-801), the historical life of Christ is the symbol of the life of the Church, his mystical body (In Joh. Com., 10, 20: CB. IV, 209), the visible Church is the image of the invisible and heavenly Church, its rites are the image of what takes place spiritually in the invisible Church: similarly the ecclesiastical reconciliation of the penitent is the sign of his return into the spiritual Church of the "saints" (K. Rahner, La doctrine d'Origène sur la pénitence, Paris 1950), and even the sacramental eating of the Body of Christ is the image of the spiritual eating of the Logos. The Logos manifests itself under a threefold sensible aspect: of the Incarnation, of Scripture, of the Church, which are therefore, in different respects, three symbols and mysteries of the Word.

Such a theology often lacks rigor and can disorient certain spirits little sensitive to the notion of symbol; for this reason Protestants regarded Origen as the theorist of a purely eucharistic symbolism (F. Loofs, Leitfaden zur Dogmengeschichte, Halle 1906, p. 212; A. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, I, 4th ed., Tübingen 1910, pp. 476-78) and certain Catholics find themselves in difficulty in responding (thus F. Prat, Origène, Paris 1907, p. 313; J. Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes, I, 10th ed., ibid. 1924, p. 324; G. Bareille, Origène, in DThC, V, coll. 1138-39; P. Batiffol, L'Eucharistie, ibid. 1938, pp. 270-71), but it nonetheless reveals an immense richness and gives to the "mystery" all its breadth and all its depth, sacramental and ecclesiological at the same time, offers all the elements of the sign and opens the way to the theology, so fruitful, of the res et sacramentum.

To give a final example of theological symbolism among the Greek Fathers, one must cite, in a quite different milieu however, pseudo-Dionysius. Undoubtedly, he insisted too much on the negative (apophatic) aspect of theology (mystical theology), but the parallelism that he established, for example, between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the celestial hierarchy becomes incomprehensible if, in the former, one does not discern an image and a symbol of the latter (Hier. Eccl., I, 5: PG 3, 376-77). The liturgy and the sacramental rites are the symbols, "the sensible signs of intelligible mysteries" (Hier. Eccl., II, 2, 3: PG 3, 397): the theologian's whole effort must be directed toward rising from the one to the other. It is well known how widely Dionysius's works spread in the West and how, through the authority that his pseudonym conferred on him, Latin theology largely absorbed his symbolism. Nor should it be forgotten how much the religious thought of the East, particularly the Russian, under the constant influence of the Greek Fathers and through the notable contribution of the liturgy, remained wholly permeated with that symbolism.

The Latin Fathers made great use of symbolism also outside of exegesis, especially with regard to the Sacraments, or rather the Sacramentum (or mysterium), because the concept of Sacramentum had a broader meaning than that currently contained in the word sacrament: it embraces both the mystery of Scripture and that of the Incarnation, both the mystery of the Church and that of the Sacraments (cf. the De Mysteriis of St. Hilary, the treatises De Mysteriis and De Sacramentis, De Incarnationis Dominicae mysterio of St. Ambrose). Already St. Cyprian made much use of the symbolism of the Eucharistic elements to construct a theology of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and of its ecclesiological meaning (Ep., 63, 13: CSEL, 3, 712), just as the symbolism of Baptism, which is one, offers him the means to illustrate the mystery of the unity of the Church (unitatis Sacramentum: Ep., 74, 11: CSEL, 3, 808).

St. Augustine, who knew the works of St. Cyprian and, through St. Ambrose, had been able to come under some influence of Origenian thought, was for the West the initiator of a "symbolic" theology of the Sacrament, which is inserted into the theology of the sign (cf. De doctrina christiana, I, 2, 2: PL 34, 19-20). The Sacrament is a sign: sacrum signum (De Civitate Dei, X, 5: CSEL, 40, 452; Ep., 138, 7: CSEL, 44, 131), whose value depends on an analogy and likeness to the thing signified (Ep., 98, 9: CSEL, 33, 531). The thing, res, signified by the Sacrament, is Christ, in every aspect of its mystery; all the facts narrated in the Old Testament are sacramenta fulfilled in Christ (v. the texts cited by Feret, in bibl.). In this way the Eucharist, to confine ourselves to this example which is the most important, is the sign of the physical body of Christ, but also of his "ecclesiological" body, and the eucharistic body is, at the same time, res et sacramentum. Availing himself in turn, after St. Cyprian, of the symbolism of the eucharistic elements, St. Augustine discovered in them the sacramentum of the unity of the Church, mysterium... unitatis (Sem. Guelf. 7, 2: ed. G. Morin, in Miscellanea Agostiniana, I, Rome 1930, p. 463). These texts, like those of Origen, disconcerted certain scholars, who were unable to connect them within the sacramental perspective of Augustine's thought and therefore arbitrarily distinguished in him symbolism and realism. In this theology, undoubtedly, the causality of the Sacraments (vis, virtus) tends to end up in second place, but for St. Augustine the link between the sign and its meaning (aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur; Sermo 272: PL 38, 1247) is not purely extrinsic: it rests on an analogy of nature. Similarly when St. Augustine seeks to discover in human psychology images of the Trinity, he does not intend to give a conventional illustration of the mystery; if man was created in the image and likeness of God, in his soul he must bear a vestige and a sign of the Creator, which can constitute the best analogy for the revealed mystery. The rising, therefore, from the sign to the divine reality of which it is a symbol, is theological symbolism in the most exact meaning of the term. It is such a symbolism that allowed St. Augustine to pass from believing to intelligere (De Trin., XV, 1, 1: PL 42, 1057) in which the work of the theologian properly consists.

The influence of Augustinian symbolism lasted throughout the Latin Middle Ages. It must, however, have provoked disorientation, revealing the difficulties that arise from preserving a completely balanced theological position. In the 9th century, Paschasius Radbertus bent Augustinian theology on the Eucharist toward realism (De corpore et sanguine Domini, n. 831) and pushed toward a clear progress the theological elaboration, rigidly fixed in the richness of symbolism. Opposing him, in a work of the same title, Ratramnus (859) maintained, as it seems, that if the body of Christ is present in mysterio, this is nothing but the figure or the virtus corporis. If in the 11th century, Berengar, denying what shortly afterward was called transubstantiation, went back to St. Augustine and to his definition of the sacrum signum, the rationalist tendencies of his thought and his rather rigid dialectic have nothing to do with the elasticity of the theological symbolism of the Fathers, and if he denied transubstantiation and remained quite imprecise regarding the real presence he is by no means a symbolist in the manner of Origen and Augustine. Thus the theology of the patristic or monastic type, wholly imbued with scriptural texts and symbols, gave way, little by little, to a "scientific" theology, of the conceptual and deductive type (M. D. Chenu, La théologie comme science au XIIe siècle, Paris 1943). There was a real progress, which was realized not only through the influence of historical contingencies (the introduction of Aristotelianism) but also through the impulse of the demands of the human spirit, which tends to give its own faith a scientific arrangement, so as to grasp all its intelligibility.

The great scholastic doctors, however, did not for this reason lose the riches of the Augustinian tradition. The sacramental theology of St. Thomas Aquinas is entirely founded on the notion of the sign (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 60, a. 1) and precisely here, the Summa indicates, with respect to the Commentary on the Sentences, which depends totally on Hugh of St. Victor, a return to the Augustinian conception; it completes, then, the total elaboration of the notion of res et sacramentum, already sketched by Origen and Augustine, then by Peter Lombard, and founded entirely on a two-degree symbolism (ibid., q. 63, a. 3). Thus his theology of the Eucharist, which has its center, without doubt, on transubstantiation and on the real presence (ibid. q. 75, 76, 77) is faithful to the Augustinian tradition on the ecclesiological and eschatological symbolism of the body of Christ (Eucharistia est Sacramentum ecclesiasticae unitatis, ibid., q. 73, a. 2; res huius Sacramenti est unitas corporis mystici, ibid., q. 73, s. 3; cf. q. 73, aa. 4, 5, 6; q. 74, a. 1). Similar observations could be made regarding many questions of the Summa: those, for example, which treat of the work of the six days (Sum. Theol., 1a, qq. 68-74), or of the Old Law (ibid., 1a-2ae, qq. 98-105), or of the rites of the Mass (ibid., 3a, q. 83; it is easy to note that St. Thomas studies the eucharistic sacrifice precisely from this point of view). The theological synthesis of St. Thomas, having reached the highest degree of rigor and scientific precision, gave religious symbolism its proper value. Such equilibrium was not to last: classical theology tended to ignore all the richness of symbolism, which peeped out in a certain rather arbitrary allegorical exegesis or in certain explanations of the rites of the Mass (already in Amalarius), both of them so far from true liturgy as from the true spiritual sense of Scripture. One can, however, note a rebirth of theological symbolism in certain positions which, moreover, are quite far from the symbolism of the Fathers.

Some leaders of the "reformation", like Zwingli and Calvin, deniers of the real presence, saw in the Sacrament of the Supper only the image or the figure of Christ immolated and risen. "Our Lord Jesus Christ has left to the Church, his bride, his image in the Sacrament of the Supper" (Zwingli, Corp. Ref., IV, iv, 858); Jesus instituted and gave to his disciples "the figure of his Body and of his Blood" (Calvin, Institution chrétienne, IV, 18, 19 and 20). Calvin could also appeal to certain expressions of the Fathers (some liberal Protestants interpreted Tertullian, Origen and St. Augustine in this sense), but, in reality, this does not correspond to their thought, which never opposed symbol (image) to reality.

Quite another thing is the "religious symbolism" or "symbolo-fideism" that surfaced at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. Linking themselves to the thought of Schleiermacher, some Protestant theologians, for example, A. Sabatier (1839-1901) and E. Ménégoz (1838-1921), considered our religious concepts necessarily inadequate with respect to their object, as simple symbols. Dogmas are symbolic expressions, not of the same objective and transcendent religious reality, but of our religious experience. This, and nothing else, can be demanded of the Fathers. Certain modernists, for example, M. Hébert (1851-1916), took up in their turn this position: dogmas are nothing but symbols, by means of which the human spirit expresses to itself the moral truths with which it must nourish its own action. This tendency is clearly condemned by the encyclical Puscendi Dominici gregis (Denz-U, 2079).

The encyclical Humani generis (Aug. 12, 1950) alluded to those who hold that "the doctrine of transubstantiation, as being based on an outdated philosophical notion of substance, must be so emended that the real presence of Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist is reduced to a kind of symbolism, inasmuch as the consecrated species are only efficacious signs of the spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful members in the mystical body" (AAS, 42 [1950], pp. 570-71). To reduce Eucharistic symbolism in this way to being nothing more than the sign of a "purely spiritual" presence would be to abuse the formulas of St. Augustine and to compromise the dogma of the real presence.

3. Conclusion

It has been shown that theological symbolism is an important element of Christian thought; it is to be deplored that a very acute mind, a rationalist, did not appreciate it or indeed deformed it to the point of setting it in opposition to the realism of faith. It must be admitted that modern thought has become estranged from such a way of expressing itself. Harnack had already noted this with regard to Origen: "We, today, understand by the name of s. a thing that is not what it signifies; once, on the other hand, by s. was understood a thing that was, in some manner, really what it signified" (Dogmengeschichte, I, 4th ed., Tübingen 1910, p. 476). In this observation is found the explanation of the profound meaning of the theological symbolism of the ancients, as well as the explanation of the process of deformation to which the moderns have subjected it. If, while preserving the rational and realistic demands that are the magnificent result of scholastic theology, this sense of the s. and of "mystery" could be recovered, an incalculable benefit would derive from it for religious thought, which could thus draw closer to certain modern minds, more sensitive than once they were to symbolic and artistic expression; consequently the renewed contact with Scripture, the Fathers and the liturgy (which St. Thomas had never abandoned) cannot be for scholastic theology itself anything but a fruitful enrichment.

Tommaso Camelot

IV. LITURGICAL SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM

1. Specific character of symbolism I

Liturgical symbolism differs from religious symbolism in general and from every other kind of human symbolism for the reason that it symbolizes and represents truths, or realities, or in any case concepts and ideas of the supernatural order.

The liturgy itself gives an account of this in many passages. It is enough to recall, for example: 1) the Christmas Preface, where the whole profound reality of religious and liturgical symbolism is concisely described with the words "dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amore rapiamur". 2) The ancient Oremus used in the feast of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, which comes from the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary (cod. Vat. Rel. 316), says "Conferat nobis, Domine, s. Ioannis B. solemnitas, ut et magnifica sacraments, which we have received, let us venerate what they signify, and let us rather rejoice in the things that have been wrought in us. 3) The fifth Oremus of the Blessing of the palms, which however appears only in the 11th century, contains the happy formula, for the liturgical symbolism of the palms: "factum et significatum," thus uniting the two elements that constitute liturgical symbolism: the thing that serves as a symbol, and the supernatural truth or reality that is represented by it and that, as in the Sacraments, beyond the symbolism itself, also includes a supernatural action wrought in the man who approaches the symbol, that is, in this case, the Sacrament, or the sacramental, the real vehicle of Grace. St. Gregory the Great insists repeatedly on the religious, scriptural and liturgical symbolism of the divine word; let one example suffice for all: in Homily 11 on the Gospels he begins with this descriptive definition that serves for all the other cases: "Caelorum regnum... idcirco terrenis rebus simile dicitur, ut ex his quae animus novit, surgat ad incognita quae non novit: quatenus exemplo visibilium se ad invisibilia rapiat" (PL 76, 1114-15).

The Middle Ages, continuing on this basis, cultivated liturgical symbolism with predilection, so much so that it ended in exaggerations and arbitrary and artificial interpretations. Attempts were made to find symbolism in things, actions, and words that had none at all: for example, when people came to see in every part and action of Holy Mass a correspondence to the Passion of the Lord, which in truth does not exist: the initiator of these exaggerated symbolic interpretations is Amalarius, followed then by almost all the most notable medieval treatise-writers, such as Honorius of Autun, Sicard of Cremona, Durandus of Mende. It is not surprising, therefore, that with Humanism and with the Reformation religious and liturgical symbolism fell into discredit. With the recent and more thorough studies of the liturgy and of religious psychology, a just revaluation of religious and especially liturgical symbolism is beginning to make headway once again, and it is hoped that in a future reform the true and sound liturgical symbolism may be brought back to new vitality, as has been done, for example, with success, in the reform of the Easter Vigil.

2. Things

In the liturgy the most varied things are used and in the most different ways: vestments, furniture, utensils, liturgical buildings, things belonging to the flora or the fauna or the insensible world, works of art, etc. A quantity of these "things" are necessary also for the common daily use of human life: water, light, fire, house, clothing, foods, etc., and many are used without symbolism, while others, on the other hand, even in civil and daily use, are not free from symbolic acceptations and interpretations: it suffices to recall the acceptation common to all peoples of the general symbolism of water, of light, of fire (fusion), of salt as a preservative, of certain flowers or trees (lily, rose, violet, palm, laurel, etc.), of certain colors (with meaning varying according to the usage of peoples). Many of these symbolisms are entirely natural and flow from the original destination of the things themselves; others are somewhat conventional, according to different psychological determinations, proper to the various populations (black as the color of mourning among the Indo-Europeans, white instead among the Chinese, Japanese and neighboring peoples; the kiss as a sign of love and tenderness among the Eurasian peoples, but unknown among the Negrid populations, etc.). Many symbolisms of this kind, in themselves natural and common, have also passed, with an identical or similar interpretation, into the worship of the same peoples, and, consequently, also into the worship of the Catholic Church. Many of them, moreover, were formed through a subsequent interpretation by liturgists, especially medieval ones, beginning with Amalarius (9th century). Often, too, a thing used in the liturgy, originally without expressed symbolism, was later honored by a particular blessing, and this soon provoked also a symbolic interpretation: such is the case of many sacramentals.

Some brief notes on the best-known symbols will be useful: a) Light. - Symbol of God, and especially of Christ (paschal candle), of Faith, of the illumination received in Baptism: symbol also of offering and sacrifice, the luminous matter being consumed in its own flame (eucharistic lamp); the use of illumination, in itself necessary, very early received a symbolic interpretation, as in antiquity; the illumination of cities on the holy night of Easter.

b) Sun. - The great solar lamp, in all religions, holds a particular importance, being itself divinized, or at least considered as a symbol and image of the divinity. Christianity, uniting to the pre-existing reality of solar symbolism, so common, the supernatural reality, and following directly the direction given by the Lord himself who presented himself, humanly speaking, as "the light of the world," made particular use of solar symbolism, especially felt in antiquity, much closer than we are to the solar cults of various kinds that flourished in ancient paganism (cf. J. Dölger, Sal Salutis).

c) Water. - This too, of wide symbolic use and vast symbolic interpretation in all religions, is also used by Christianity (preceded, moreover, by the Synagogue), in its rites, as a sign of lustration, of purification, accompanying its use with the various blessings, and creating various kinds of lustral waters, from ordinary holy water to waters with the addition of other substances (ashes, balm, etc.) for solemn lustrations and in the various consecrations (churches, bells, etc.).

d) Salt. - Salt is of wide use in the Catholic liturgy especially for its quality as a preservative element, whereby it has become a symbol of "wisdom" which preserves from "foolishness," and of all the supernatural gifts (Grace, virtues), which preserve the soul from sin and from the influence of the "world"; whence the use of salt in the baptismal rites, in the blessing of the various holy waters. On the other hand, the ancient and common use of salt as a sign of fruitlessness (scattered over cities destroyed and condemned to extermination) has not entered into ecclesiastical symbolism.

e) Incense. - Incense and incensation (of common and ordinary use not only in ancient, pagan cults, but also in the ceremonials of ancient courts, because princes, Eastern first, then also Roman, were considered as representatives of the divinities), passed into the use of the Church in the same traditional religious symbolic acceptation, as a sign of veneration toward sacred persons (pontiff, priest, as representative of Christ in the liturgical celebration), and also as a sign of civil veneration, that is, of distinction (this too was the primitive origin of the incensation of sacred persons); it was also, for the same reason, employed toward sacred things, whether blessed or consecrated, and in any case of sacred use: hence the use of incensing things immediately after their blessing (branches, candles, ashes, etc.), the wide employment of incense and incensation in the great actions of consecration (church, altar, bells, etc.), and of certain things, objects, or sacred furnishings during the various functions, especially in the solemn Mass (book of the Gospel, altar, the Sacred Species during the Consecration).

f) Among the sacred things that have gradually become filled with symbolism, the sacred building—the church—stands out above all, with all its furnishings, and in the first place the altar, as the place of sacrifice and the central point of the church; however, the primitive symbolisms surrounding church and altar are relatively few and quite natural: the church (building) as the visible sign of the invisible Church, of which it encloses, in the liturgy, a part, that is, the present community of Christians; and the altar as sign and image of Christ. But very soon, from the 3rd century onward, that is, from the time when the grand rites of the consecration of churches and altars developed, the symbolisms multiplied, and the Middle Ages succeeded in attributing a symbolic interpretation to everything, often highly far-fetched and artificial (cf. J. Sauer, op. cit. in bibl.).

3. Persons

Symbolism soon took possession of sacred persons, that is, those consecrated to the celebrations of the divine mysteries, namely those dedicated to worship, beginning with the people themselves, the singers, the various sacred ministers, up to the highest ranks. The fundamental symbolism, which is largely based on revealed truths, hence on invisible realities, is that of the representation of Christ, of the Apostles or disciples of Christ, and of the Church as the community of the faithful, and figure of the future eternal Jerusalem. Here too the Middle Ages went very far, in explanations and interpretations that were at times arbitrary; but the real foundation indicated above always remains, whereby the entire sacred community, including the presiding celebrants, is surrounded by rites and ceremonies that are in turn symbolic and representative (kisses, bows, inclinations, genuflections, incensations, etc.). The vesture used by those dedicated to worship also soon received symbolic (mystical) interpretations, especially in the Middle Ages. The arrangement of the sacred vestments and their decoration, as well as the canon of liturgical colors, depends in part also on these symbolisms. Certain sacred persons, among whom from the early Middle Ages princes (emperor, king) were also numbered, later received a special consecration or blessing, which made them fit and capable of acting and functioning according to the requirements of their office; some of these transmissions of office and dignity are, by divine institution in the Church, true Sacraments (v. below), others are constitutive and sacramental blessings.

4. Numbers

The symbolism of numbers, a universal human element since the dawn of humanity, has a certain importance in liturgies. According to the very primitive and widespread use of the duodecimal system, the numbers 3, 4, 9, 12, 24, etc. are commonly given value. The Old Testament knows this symbolism and amplifies it with the number 7 and 40 and other less important ones. The same numbers pass into the symbolism of the New Testament and therefore into the liturgy, though often with a new foundation taken from Revelation, such as the Most Holy Trinity, the seven Sacraments, the twelve Apostles, the twenty-four elders, and so on. Some liturgical elements are explicitly based on the symbolism of numbers, such as the ternary or triple ternary of litanic invocations (the Kyrie), the seven candlesticks in the ancient papal liturgy, which later passed into the episcopal one, the twelve crosses in the consecration of churches (apostles, gates of the heavenly Jerusalem), and many others.

5. Animals

Antiquity and the Middle Ages insisted greatly on animal symbolism; see the Physiologus and the medieval bestiaries, Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, the Lombard, Irish and Romanesque initials with figures of animals. The lion, symbol of Christ himself but also of the devil (a typical example of polyvalent symbolism), the fish, the sheep, the eagle, later the pelican, the fox and the hare, the serpent—all show a richness of symbolism that finds wide application especially in sacred art, but at times, and for certain categories, also in liturgical formulas.

6. Sacramental symbolism

In the administration of the Sacraments properly so called, one must distinguish accidental and secondary symbolisms from true sacramental symbolism in the strict and direct sense. The Sacraments of the Church, by immediate divine institution, since they produce supernatural and in themselves invisible effects, have been bound, so that they might become perceptible to men, to visible signs or symbols, which not only signify but also normally produce, unless a peremptory obstacle exists, the specific sacramental Grace, in union with the sacramental formula that determines and circumscribes the efficacy of the external sign (action). Here we are faced with a true symbolism, or imaginative representation through an external act that has a relation of likeness or connection with the thing signified, natural and direct. But this symbolic-sacramental act, which together with the formula constitutes the Sacrament, is then surrounded and enriched by a greater or lesser quantity of other symbolisms or symbolic actions that are not of the essence of the Sacrament itself, but belong to its liturgical execution. The most used sacramental symbol is the imposition of the hand or hands, as sign and testimony of the transmission or the exercise of a power or faculty with regard to the person to whom it is applied (Penance, Order). In Baptism the sacramental symbol consists in immersion in water (burial) and in emergence (resurrection); in the Eucharist, in the form of a sacrificial banquet, while the sacrifice is represented under the form of two separate sacramental species; anointing with oil, on the other hand, is the sacramental symbol in the anointing of the sick, sign of the healing of the soul from sin and its consequences.

Sacramental symbolism, over the centuries, has undergone variations and evolutions, at times even in the form of simplification or reduction, unfortunately not always without loss of the immediate perception of the symbolism itself, that is, of the image. Thus, for example, the essential rite of Baptism is today commonly reduced to the form of a rapid ablution of the head; but, as clearly emerges from the primitive sacramental ceremony and from the dogmatic explanations of St. Paul (especially Rom. 6), the sacramental symbolism of Baptism consisted in complete immersion under water, with the following emergence from it, as a real and concrete image of the burial of Christ under the earth and of his subsequent resurrection. The true and fundamental symbolism of Baptism with the current rite of ablution has been so weakened both among the faithful and among priests that it is no longer perceived: in its place the idea of washing has come in, a symbolism that retains something of the primitive one. St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 66, a. 8) summarizes the question of the sacramental symbolism of Baptism in these terms: «Dicendum quod in immersione expressius representatur figura sepulturae Christi, et ideo hic modus baptizandi est omnium et laudabilior et communior. Sed et in aliis modis baptizandi representatur aliquo modo, licet non ita expresse. Nam quocumque modo fiat ablutio, corpus hominis vel aliqua pars eius aquae supponitur, sicut corpus Christi sub terra fuit positum».

Likewise the primitive imposition of hands on the penitent, in the sacrament of penance, has been reduced to a barely perceptible gesture before absolution; in the celebration of Holy Mass the original symbolism of the table, in which all those present participate, is today, in comparison with the primitive rites, very difficult to recognize.

The question of sacramental symbolism acquires today, in the climate of liturgical restoration, from the particular pastoral point of view, a new importance, all the more so the less the present generation is in general capable of and inclined to such symbolisms.

Giuseppe Löw

V. SYMBOLISM AND "SYMBOLISM" IN LITERATURE

Designation of a group of related poetics that appeared and were formulated in France between 1870 and 1890, derived from a progressive distancing from decadentism. In 1885 J. Moréas, replying to P. Boudier who had accused Verlaine, Mallarmé and their circle of "decadentism," defined such poets as symboliques. The contribution of a first, more widespread knowledge of Far Eastern literatures is not to be overlooked.

Symbolism draws from the poetry to which it turns its gaze (that of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé) an attitude and an expressive category (the elaboration of the symbol, the correspondence), eternal in any case, and proposes them to new poetic personalities (those of Verhaeren, Jammes, Claudel, Apollinaire, George, Yeats, Hofmannsthal), each of which, in varying degree, by different paths, and with multiple connections, would give expression to the theme. It influences yet other poets, such as Gide, Proust, Ibsen, Bloch, Bal'mont, Valéry, Rilke, Wilde, Swinburne, whose poetic center is, more or less, distant, of another tradition and of a different coloring.

Schematically, one could discern the "seal" that symbolism imprints on image, rhythm, sound, etc. in their "disembodiment," which in reality brings it close to the Parnassianism it intends to react against, and (what is rather its own) in dissolving their traditional relationships, thus proposing new juxtapositions. In its inferior forms, therefore, symbolism falls into impotence chiefly through lack of rhythm, harmony and order, through meager rationalizing abstractness and nebulousness. The poetry, however, that draws inspiration from it, or has it as its historical basis, is marked by a new opening of horizon and has accustomed contemporary man to seek (among other things with the vigilant effort to renew, in poetic tone alone, and in position alone, words now worn out) new ways of approaching the relationships between subject and object, between the contingent and the absolute. This latter demand has created lively affinities between symbolism and certain spirits particularly sensitive to the religious problem. Symbolist poetry makes simple rhythms, pared-down melodies and few essential images vibrate in vast and silent spaces. Noteworthy too is the new meaning that symbolism gives to emptiness, that is (as Rilke noted) to the description, not of the object, physical or spiritual, but of the contours it leaves marked in physical and spiritual space, circumambient and distant (recall, for example, the Mallarmé of Igitur). As not the least consequence, it has made necessary a new reflection on the limits, or on the difficulty of establishing them, between poetry and that quid which could be called sub-poetry.

Gastone Pettenati