**TRANSFIGURATION** (Gr. μεταμόρφωσις).
I. THE EVENT
The miraculous appearance of Jesus Christ, toward the end of His preaching, to the three beloved disciples, Peter, James, and John, in a glorious form.
The event is described in detail by the Synoptic Gospels, each of which presents its own characteristics while agreeing on the substance of the fact. The three Apostles were struck not only by the radiance of Jesus’ garments but also by the presence of Elijah and Moses, whom they heard speaking, and by the mysterious voice that, through a cloud, uttered the words: “This is my beloved Son (Mt. adds: ‘in whom I am well pleased’), listen to Him.” As they descended from the mountain, Jesus charged the Apostles to keep silent about what they had seen and heard. Lk. 9:28-36 limits its account to this point, while Mt. 17:1-13, along with Mk. 9:1-12, adds the question raised by the disciples about the second coming of Elijah. Jesus explains that the mission of this prophet had already been fulfilled by John the Baptist.
The event of the Transfiguration is also recalled in 2 Pt. 1:16-18, where it is affirmed that the three Apostles were able to behold “the majestic splendor” (μεγαλειότης) and heard the words of the heavenly Father. From the Pauline antithesis (Phil. 2:6) between the “form of God” (μορφή τοῦ Θεοῦ) and the “form of a slave” (μορφή τοῦ δούλου), and from the various statements of the Evangelists, it must be concluded that the presence of a divine nature was evident throughout. The phenomenon is described in relation to the impression it made on the Apostles. There is no requirement that the human nature should have been diminished (cf. John of Damascus, *Hom. in Transfig. Domini*, 12; PG 96, 564; St. Thomas Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae*, 3ª, q. 45, a. 2). Through the Transfiguration, Jesus confirmed Peter’s confession, strengthened the Apostles—whom He had shortly before foretold His passion and death—and demonstrated the superiority of His own mission and the Gospel over the most renowned figures of antiquity and the Mosaic Law. He manifested His divinity, while the Father’s words affirmed His eternal, real, and transcendent Sonship.
All exegetes prior to biblical rationalism acknowledge the authenticity of the account and the objective reality of the miracle. Those who do not believe in the supernatural offer a “naturalistic” explanation (Paulus, Spitta, Schleiermacher), perhaps attributing a large part to the Apostles’ illusion (Neander, Grätz, Bleek, Weizsäcker, B. Weiss, A. Reville, A. Harnack, Ed. Meyer), or resort to a “myth,” attributing it to Jewish (Strauss, De Wette, Reisenfeld), Greek (Lohmeyer, W. Bousset), or Indian influences (Seydel, Van den Bergh van Eysinga).
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II. THE PLACE OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
The place of the mystery of the Transfiguration is indicated by the Synoptic Evangelists as “a mountain” (Lk. 9:28), “high” (Mt. 17:1; Mk. 9:1), and described by St. Peter, an eyewitness, as “holy” (2 Pt. 1:18), though neither its name nor its precise location is specified. Eusebius, who collected local traditions of Palestine, expressed uncertainty about the site of the Transfiguration. Commenting on Ps. 88:13, “Mount Tabor and Hermon shall exult...” (PG 13, 1092), he writes: “I think that on these mountains took place the extraordinary Transfigurations of our Savior”; yet in his *Onomasticon*, describing the two mountains, he makes no reference to them. A tradition dating to the 4th century (the text of Seleucia in Psalmus attributed to Origen, which claims the Transfiguration occurred on Mount Tabor, does not appear authentic: cf. R. Devreesse, in *DBs*, I, cols. 1120-22), consistently upheld to this day, identifies Tabor as “the holy mountain of the Transfiguration.”The first witness is St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who died in 386 (PG 33, 743-44), followed by St. Jerome, who, in describing the itinerary of St. Paula, states that she “visited Mount Tabor, on which the Lord was transfigured” (PL 22, 889, cf. 491). Some modern authors, both Catholic and Protestant, have favored Mount Hermon, arguing that it lies in the region of Caesarea Philippi where Jesus was, is the highest mountain (2,759 m.), and that the snow covering its summit resembles the whiteness of the Transfigured One’s garments. However, in favor of Tabor, it is noted that “a week’s journey” would be too long to reach Hermon but sufficient to travel from Caesarea Philippi to Tabor; that, descending from the mountain, Jesus found a crowd of Jews gathered around the epileptic boy whom the disciples had been unable to heal, whereas at the foot of Hermon He would have found only pagans. Tabor (v.), rising 588 m. and isolated on the vast plain of Esdraelon, appears as a high mountain. It is objected that, since its summit was occupied by a fortress, it was not a secluded place; but the fortress was put into a state of defense by Flavius Josephus at the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 67 A.D. (*The Jewish War*, I, 8).
The history of the mountain from the 4th century onward blends with that of the Sanctuary erected in memory of the mystery. The anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza (570) found there three basilicas in memory of the three tabernacles mentioned by St. Peter, and Arculf (670) noted a large number of monks (“a great monastery of monks and many of their cells”). In 808, the *Commemoratorium de casis Dei* mentions the bishopric of Tabor with 18 monks serving the churches. In 1100, a community of Benedictines settled there, endowed with substantial revenues by Tancred, Prince of Galilee. In 1113, 72 Benedictines were massacred by the Turks, but a new community repopulated the ruins, rebuilding and fortifying the monastery and completing the church. The community held out against Saladin in 1183, though the Greek monastery was plundered and sacked; yet after the crushing defeat of the Crusaders at Hattin (1187), the Benedictines too had to abandon II.
The Sultan al-Malik al-’Adil had a fortress rebuilt there, completed in 1212 and, by his order, demolished in 1218. Transferred by Alexander IV in 1255 to the Hospitaller Order, the church and religious buildings were ruined during Baibars’ campaign in 1263. The site, abandoned for more than four centuries, was visited by pilgrims accompanied by Franciscans from Nazareth; it was purchased by them in 1631. Only in 1924, above the ruins of the ancient churches rebuilt in the same place, the Custody of the Holy Land erected the magnificent Basilica (architect A. Barluzzi).
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III. THE LITURGICAL FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
The feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated in the Latin Church on August 6 with a double rite of the second class. The Mass has a magnificent *Ordo*, the Office has its own psalmody, and the tone is one of great solemnity.The pericope of Matthew (17:1–8), the only one that has entered into liturgical use, is also read on the Saturday of the Lenten Ember Days and the following Sunday. It is erroneous, or at least highly questionable, to speak of a feast of the Transfiguration celebrated in the 5th century by the Roman Church during Lent, which would later have been transferred outside of Lent: this is simply the reading of one of the many Lenten pericopes for purely doctrinal purposes, within the framework of Lenten instruction that focuses on the idea of redemption as the transition from a state of sin to one of grace through participation in the Passion and Death of Christ. The episode of the Transfiguration, which reveals the final state of glory of Christ and, with Him, of the elect, is linked by the Lord Himself to His Passion in the words that conclude the episode.
The sermon of St. Leo the Great, delivered on this Saturday (the Sunday Mass is later; at his time it was still at the *Urbi et Orbi* blessing, or rather, the concluding Mass of the Saturday vigil already fell on the same Sunday), is not a festive sermon but one from the series of Lenten sermons, perhaps more solemn and lengthy because it was delivered during the Ember Day vigil (Serm. 51: PL 54, 308–13). The sermons of the Greek Fathers generally form part of the ordinary evangelical exposition, such as the celebrated sermon of St. John Chrysostom, *Hom. 75 in Matth.* (PG 57, 549 ff.).
In the East, however, apart from and outside of Lent, the Transfiguration soon appears as the object of a true liturgical feast. The Armenians trace this feast (celebrated on the Sunday VII after Pentecost) directly back to their illuminator, St. Gregory (4th century), who is said to have replaced the popular festival of Venus and *Rosa flamma* with that of the feast of the glorified Lord; thus the less reliable tradition of the 7th century preserves this account, as recorded by Gregory Arhauni (c. 690). Shortly afterward (5th–6th century), the Nestorians of the Sassanid kingdom celebrated it as the Feast of Tabernacles. In Ethiopia, it appears at the same time, on August 13.
To find (with great probability) the reason for the more usual date, August 6, we must return to the same Mount Tabor, long considered the site of the Transfiguration (Origen). Even if the report of a church (oratory) founded on the mountain by St. Helena is not confirmed, there was certainly an oratory, if not a basilica, on the summit of Tabor as early as the 4th century; the bishop certainly seated on Tabor in 553, from the Fifth Council of Constantinople, contributed to the formation of a group of churches, oratories, and monasteries, as seen by the Anonymous of Piacenza in 570.
Now, the date of August 6 would be explained as the date of the consecration of the episcopal church and its anniversary. In any case, even in the West there are traces of a feast of the Transfiguration very early on, though not always with certain dates. In Visigothic Spain, the feast was celebrated on August 6, as attested by St. Isidore (indeed, it was celebrated between Masses, as at Christmas). In the Martyrology of Warsaw, in 874, the feast is found on the same date. Various calendars from St. Gall, Tegernsee, and Cologne (8th–11th centuries) place the feast on July 27, August 5, 6, or 8; the autograph Calendar of St. Willibrord (702–706) has it on July 27. During the Middle Ages, the Transfiguration was solemnized in various places and on different dates; by the late Middle Ages, to give a few examples, it was celebrated on March 17 at Meissen (it had remained near the Saturday of the Ember Days), on August 26 at Passau, on September 3 at Halberstadt, etc.
The feast of the Transfiguration, then, especially toward the end of the Middle Ages, was by no means unknown; but its official extension to the entire Church and the unification of its date are linked to the pontificate of Callistus III, the Catalan pope who devoted himself so vigorously to the struggle against the Turks. The news of the Christian victory at Belgrade (July 21–22, 1456), which reached him on August 6, provided the occasion for elevating the feast of the Transfiguration to the rank of a *duplex* rite and imposing it on the universal Church. Callistus did so with the bull *Inter divinae dispositionis arcana*, dated August 6, 1457 (Bull. Rom., ed. Cocquelin, III, 3, Rome 1743, pp. 85–88), and with a series of briefs to the most prominent princes regarding this liturgical imposition. The date of August 6 was chosen because it was already in use as the principal date of the feast and for the felicitous coincidence noted above. Callistus III commissioned the Dominican Giacomo Gil to compose a new office, which was however partly altered (lessons, hymns) by Pius V. Clement VIII gave the feast the rite of *duplex maius*, which he had introduced; Pius X, in the reform of 1911–13, elevated the feast to its present rite, chiefly because it is the titular feast of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, head and mother of all the churches of the world. Indeed, the Transfiguration is repeated as the titular feast of all churches dedicated to the Savior without any other particular title.
Among the various liturgical-popular customs, it is worth noting that in some places it was customary on this feast to press the first bunch of red grapes, mixing their juice with the wine of the Mass, in memory of the light emanating from the glorified body of the Lord at the Transfiguration.
Giuseppe Löw
IV. ARCHAEOLOGY
St. Augustine teaches that in the Transfiguration Jesus Christ signifies the Gospel, which receives its testimony from the Law represented by Moses and the Prophets, depicted by Elijah (*Tractatus XVII in Evangelium Iohannis*: PL 35, 1529). In the cycle of the Ambrosian Basilica in Milan, the Transfiguration was depicted accompanied by the distich: “*Maiestate Sua rutilans sapientia vibrat / discipulisque Ducem si possint cernere monstrat*” (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscr. christ.*, II, Rome 1888, p. 242; S. Merkle, *Die Ambrosianischen Tituli*, in *Römische Quartalschrift*, 10 (1896), p. 214). The scene is also depicted in ivories, from the casket of the Brescia Lipsanotheca, to an ivory formerly in the Barberini collection, and to another in the British Museum. At Ravenna, in the apse museum of St. Apollinaris in Classe, in place of the Redeemer is a jeweled cross between Moses and Elijah; below, the three Apostles are symbolized by three angels. R. Garrucci recognizes the representation in a miniature of the Rabbula Gospels of the year 586 (*Storia dell’arte crist.*, Prato 1873–81, tav. 133, 1). In the museum on the triumphal arch of SS. Nereus and Achilleus (795–816), Christ is depicted in a mandorla against an azure background, wearing a tunic, pallium, and cruciform nimbus, with His right hand in an oratorical gesture and His left holding a scroll; to the right and left, smaller figures of the aged Elijah and the youthful Moses, with the three Apostles prostrate and nimbed. A slightly later scene is found in the chapel of St. Zeno in St. Praxedes (817–24). In Milan, the scene of the Transfiguration was represented in the altar of Volvinio in St. Ambrose (824–59) according to the Byzantine type. In the Greek manuscript of the homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, at the eighth sermon, fol. 75, Christ is on the mountain with an aureole, wearing a tunic of azure with purple stripes, making an oratorical gesture with His right hand while holding a book in His left; to the right is the youthful, beardless Moses, and to the left the bearded Elijah. The scene is indicated by the inscription in uncial letters: «*Η αγία μεταμόρφωσις*». At the foot of the mountain and of two palm trees are Peter, John, and James. The miniature inspired the scene in the mosaic calendar of the Treasure of St. John in Florence (10th century), as well as in a 10th-century miniature of Codex Gr. 1156 in the Vatican Library and in a portable museum piece in the Louvre in Paris. The same type is found in the chapel of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai and in an evangelary from Iviron on Mount Athos.Art. — It would appear that the mandorla depicted in the museum of the SS. Nereo e Achilleo would be the oldest known to date, and its subsequent use in sacred representations, up to the 16th century, should be considered as derived from the iconography of the Transfiguration and also of the Ascension of Christ.
The iconographic scheme of the Transfiguration in the so-called dalmatic of Charlemagne, a most exquisite Eastern embroidery from the end of the 13th century, in the Treasury of the Vatican Basilica (reproduced under the heading ARTE BIZANTINA), does not substantially differ from that of the manuscript of the homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Christ is seen in the upper part of the scene, flanked at some distance by the two prophets, shown in profile, while below are three apostles dazzled by the divine radiance. This iconographic arrangement would then become established in all depictions of the Transfiguration of Christ. Among these, Taddeo Gaddi’s painted panel at the Accademia in Florence is cited as a typical example of 14th-century art, and for the art of the first half of the 15th century, a bronze panel by Lorenzo Ghiberti on the first door of the Florentine Baptistery. The Blessed Angelico painted a Transfiguration in a cell of the convent of San Marco in Florence, where Christ is presented with ingenious simplicity; the figures of the two prophets, and also of the Virgin and St. Dominic, who witness the sacred mystery here, are only faintly outlined at the sides. The Angelico’s model was imitated some years later by Alessio Baldovinetti in the painted shutters for the cupboard of the Santissima Annunziata, now in the Museo di San Marco in Florence. On the threshold of the 16th century, Giovanni Bellini painted the magnificent Transfiguration in the National Museum of Naples, while Perugino frescoed its representation on the walls of the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, following more rigorously the traditional iconographic scheme. The most famous depiction of the Transfiguration of Christ is that by Raphael in the Vatican Pinacoteca. This grand work, left unfinished at the master’s death and completed in its lower part by Giulio Romano and Giovanni Penni, shows a free iconographic innovation in the representation of the crowd witnessing the divine mystery, certainly due to the genius of the Urbino master. The Flemish master Gerard David painted a notable panel of the Transfiguration of Christ in the early years of the 16th century in the church of Our Lady in Bruges, where the traditional iconographic scheme is augmented by the blessing figure of the Eternal Father, placed high among the clouds, above the radiant figure of Christ. — See pl. XLV.